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A HILLTOP ON THE MARNE 



(FROM A MEDALLION BY THEODORE SPICER-SIMSON) 

Size of original j)^ inches in diameter 



A HILLTOP ON 
THE MARNE 

BEING LETTERS WRITTEN 
JUNE 3 SEPTEMBER 8, I914 

BY 

Mildred Aldrich 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1915 






COPYRIGHT, I915, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, I915, BY MILDRED ALDRICH 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVBD 

Published October iqis 




(1CT20ISI5 

©Cl.A4i4l56 



am 



TO MY GRANDMOTHER 

JUDITH TRASK BAKER 

THAT STAUNCH NEW ENGLANDER AND 

PIONEER UNIVERSALIST 

TO THE MEMORY OF WHOSE COURAGE 

AND EXAMPLE I OWE A DEBT 

OF ETERNAL GRATITUDE 

J- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Medallion Portrait of the Author by 

Theodore Spicer-Simson Frontispiece 

The House on the Hilltop 8 

The Salon from the Front Door i6 

A Part of the Panorama from the Lawn 102 

The Road to the Marne 134 

Taken from the point where the author stopped with 
the captain of the bicycle corps 

Map of the Surrounding Country End paper 



A HILLTOP ON THE MARNE 



A HILLTOP ON 
THE MARNE 



June 3, 1914 

Well, the deed is done. I have not 
wanted to talk with you much about it 
until I was here. I know all your objections. 
You remember that you did not spare me 
when, a year ago, I told you that this was 
my plan. I realize that you — more ac- 
tive, younger, more interested in life, less 
burdened with your past — feel that it is 
cowardly on my part to seek a quiet ref- 
uge and settle myself into it, to turn my 
face peacefully to the exit, feeling that the 
end is the most interesting event ahead of 
me — the one truly interesting experience 
left to me in thi*^ incarnation. 

I am not proposing to ask you to see it 
from my point of view. You cannot, no 
matter how willing you are to try. No two 
people ever see life from the same angle. 
There is a law which decrees that two ob- 

[ 3 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

jects may not occupy the same place at the 
same time — result: two people cannot see 
things from the same point of view, and the 
slightest difference in angle changes the 
thing seen. 

I did not decide to come away into a 
little corner in the country,, in this land in 
which I was not born, without looking at 
the move from all angles. Be sure that I 
know what I am doing, and I have found 
the place where I can do it. Some time you 
will see the new home, I hope, and then you 
will understand. I have lived more than 
sixty ye^rs. I have lived a fairly active 
life, and it has been, with all its hardships 
— and they have been many — interest- 
ing. But I have had enough of the city — - 
even of Paris, the most beautiful city in 
the world. Nothing can take any of that 
away from me. It is treasured up in my 
memory. I am even prepared to own that 
there was a sort of arrogance in my per- 
sistence in choosing for so many years the 
most seductive city in the world, and say- 
ing, "Let others live where they will — 
here I propose to stay." I lived there until 
I seemed to take it for my own — to know 
it on the surface and under it, and over it, 
and around it; until I had a sort of mor- 

[ 4 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

bid jealousy when I found any one who 
knew it half as well as I did, or presumed to 
love it half as much, and dared to say so. 
You will please note that I have not gone 
far from it. 

But I have come to feel the need of calm 
and quiet — perfect peace. I know again 
that there is a sort of arrogance in expect- 
ing it, but I am going to make a bold bid 
for it. I will agree, if you like, that it is 
cowardly to say that my work is done. I 
will even agree that we both know plenty of 
women who have cheerfully gone on strug- 
gling to a far greater age, and I do think it 
downright pretty of you to find me younger 
than my years. Yet you must forgive me 
if I say that none of us know one another, 
and, likewise, that appearances are often 
deceptive. 

What you are pleased to call my "pride" 
has helped me a little. No one can decide 
for another the proper moment for striking 
one's colors. 

I am sure that you — or for that mat- 
ter any other American — never heard of 
Huiry. Yet it is a little hamlet less than 
thirty miles from Paris. It is in that dis- 
trict between Paris and Meaux little known 
to the ordinary traveler. It only consists of 

■ [ 5 I 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

less than a dozen rude farm-houses, less 
than five miles, as a bird flies, from Meaux, 
which, with a fair cathedral, and a beau- 
tiful chestnut-shaded promenade on the 
banks of the Marne, spanned just there by 
lines of old mills whose water-wheels churn 
the river into foaming eddies, has never 
been popular with excursionists. There 
are people who go there to see where Bos- 
suet wrote his funeral orations, in a little 
summer-house standing among pines and 
cedars on the wall of the garden of the 
Archbishop's palace, now, since the "sepa- 
ration," the property of the State, and 
soon to be a town museum. It is not a very 
attractive town. It has not even an out- 
of-doors restaurant to tempt the passing 
automobilist. 

f My house was, when I leased it, little 
more than a peasant's hut. It is consider- 
ably over one hundred and fifty years old, 
with stables and outbuildings attached 
whimsically, and boasts six gables. Is it 
not a pity, for early association's sake, that 
it has not one more? 

I have, as Traddles used to say, "Oceans 
of room, Copperfield," and no joking. I 
have on the ground floor of the main build- 
ing a fair sized salon, into which the front 
[ 6] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

door opens directly. Over that I have a 
long, narrow bed-room and dressing-room, 
and above that, in the eaves, a sort of 
attic work-shop. In an attached, one- 
story addition with a gable, at the west of 
the salon, I have a library lighted from 
both east and west. Behind the salon on 
the west side I have a double room which 
serves as dining- and breakfast-room, with 
a guest-chamber above. The kitchen, at 
the north side of the salon, has its own 
gable, and there is an old stable extending 
forward at the north side, and an old grange 
extending west from the dining-room. It 
is a jumble of roofs and chimneys, and 
looks very much like the houses I used to 
combine from my Noah's Ark box in the 
days of my babyhood. 

All the rooms on the ground floor are 
paved in red tiles, and the staircase is built 
right in the salon. The ceilings are raft- 
ered. The cross-beam in the salon fills my 
soul with joy — it is over a foot wide and 
a foot and a half thick. The walls and the 
rafters are painted green, — my color, — 
and so good, by long trial, for my eyes and 
my nerves, and my disposition. 

But much as I like all this, it was not 
this that attracted me here. That was the 

1 7] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

situation. The house stands in a small gar- 
den, separated from the road by an old 
gnarled hedge of hazel. It is almost on the 
crest of the hill on the south bank of the 
Marne, — the hill that is the water-shed 
between the Marne and the Grand Morin. 
Just here the Marne makes a wonder- 
ful loop, and is only fifteen minutes walk 
away from my gate, down the hill to the 
north. 

From the lawn, on the north side of the 
house, I command a panorama which I 
have rarely seen equaled. To me it is more 
beautiful than that we have so often looked 
at together from the terrace at Saint-Ger- 
main. In the west the new part of Esbly 
climbs the hill, and from there to a hill at 
the northeast I have a wide view of the val- 
ley of the Marne, backed by a low line of 
hills which is the water-shed between the 
Marne and the Aisne. Lnw down in the 
valley, at the northwest, lies lie de Ville- 
noy, like a toy town, where the big bridge 
spans the Marne to carry the railroad into 
Meaux. On the horizon line to the west 
the tall chimneys of Claye send lines of 
smoke into the air. In the foreground to 
the north, at the foot of the hill, are the 
roofs of two little hamlets, — Joncheroy 
I 8 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

and Voisins, — and beyond them the trees 
that border the canal. 

On the other side of the Marne the un- 
dulating hill, with its wide stretch of fields, 
is dotted with little villages that peep 
out of the trees or are silhouetted against 
the sky-line, — Vignely, Trilbardou, Pen- 
chard, Monthyon, Neufmortier, Chauco- 
nin, and in the foreground to the north, in 
the valley, just halfway between me and 
Meaux, lies Mareuil-on-the-Marne, with 
its red roofs, gray walls, and church spire. 
With a glass I can find where Chambry and 
Barcy are, on the slope behind Meaux, 
even if the trees conceal them. 

But these are all little villages of which 
you may never have heard. No guide- 
book celebrates them. No railroad ap- 
proaches them. On clear days I can see the 
square tower of the cathedral at Meaux, 
and I have only to walk a short distance 
on the route nationale, — which runs from 
Paris, across the top of my hill a little to 
the east, and thence to Meaux and on to 
the frontier, — to get a profile view of it 
standing up above the town, quite de- 
tached, from foundation to clock-tower. 

This is a rolling country of grain fields, 
orchards, masses of black-currant bushes, 

[ 9 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

vegetable plots, — it is a great sugar-beet 
country, — and asparagus beds ; for the 
Department of the Seine et Marne is one 
of the most productive in France, and 
every inch under cultivation. It is what 
the French call un pay sage riantj and I as- 
sure you, it does more than smile these 
lovely June mornings. I am up every morn- 
ing almost as soon as the sun, and I slip my 
feet into sabots, wrap myself in a big cloak, 
and run right on to the lawn to make sure 
that the panorama has not disappeared in 
the night. There always lie — too good 
almost to be true — miles and miles of 
laughing country, little white towns just 
smiling in the early light, a thin strip of 
river here and there, dimpling and danc- 
ing, stretches of fields of all colors — all so 
peaceful and so gay, and so "chummy" 
that it gladdens the opening day, and 
makes me rejoice to have lived to see it. I 
never weary of it. It changes every hour, 
and I never can decide at which hour it is 
the loveliest. After all, it is a rather nice 
world. 

Now get out your map and locate me. 
You will not find Huiry. But you can find 
Esbly, my nearest station on the main line 
of the Eastern Railroad. Then you will find 

[ lO 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

a little narrow-gauge road running from 
there to Crecy-la-Chapelle. Halfway be- 
tween you will find Couilly-Saint-Germain. 
Well, I am right up the hill, about a third 
of the way between Couilly and Meaux. 

It is a nice historic country. But for that 
matter so is all France. I am only fifteen 
miles northeast of Bondy, in whose forest 
the naughty Queen Fredegonde, beside 
whose tomb, in Saint-Denis, we have often 
stood together, had her husband killed, 
and nearer still to Chelles, where the Mer- 
ovingian kings once had a palace stained 
with the blood of many crimes, about 
which you read, in many awful details, in 
Maurice Strauss's "Tragique Histoire des 
Reines Brunhaut et Fredegonde," which I 
remember to have sent you when it first 
came out. Of course no trace of those days 
of the Merovingian dynasty remains here 
or anywhere else. Chelles is now one of the 
fortified places in the outer belt of forts 
surrounding Paris. 

So, if you will not accept all this as an 
explanation of what you are pleased to call 
my "desertion," may I humbly and reluc- 
tantly put up a plea for my health, and 
hope for a sympathetic hearing.^ 

If I am to live much longer, — and I am 

[ II ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

on the road down the hill, you know, — I 
demand of Life my physical well-being. I 
want a robust old age. I feel that I could 
never hope to have that much longer in 
town, — city-born and city-bred though I 
am. I used to think, and I continued to 
think for a long time, that I could not live 
if my feet did not press a city pavement. 
The fact that I have changed my mind 
seems to me, at my age, a sufficient excuse 
for, as frankly, changing my habits. It 
surely proves that I have not a sick will — 
yet. In the simple life I crave — digging 
m the earth, living out of doors — I expect 
to earn the strength of which city life and 
city habits were robbing me. I believe I 
can. Faith half wins a battle. No one ever 
dies up on this hill, I am told, except of 
hard drink. Judging by my experience 
with workmen here, not always of that. I 
never saw so many very old, very active, 
robust people in so small a space in all my 
life as I have seen here. 

Are you answered.'* 

Yet if, after all this expenditure of 
words, you still think I am shirking — 
well, I am sorry. It seems to me that, from 
another point of view, I am doing my duty, 
and giving the younger generation more 

[ 12 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

room — getting out of the lime-light, so to 
speak, which, between you and me, was 
getting trying for my mental complexion. 
If I have blundered, the consequences be 
on my own head. My hair could hardly be 
whiter — that 's something. Besides, re- 
treat is not cut off. I have sworn no eter- 
nal oath not to change my mind again. 

In any case you have no occasion to 
worry about me : I 've a head full of memo- 
ries. I am going to classify them, as I do 
my books. Some of them I am going to 
forget, just as I reject books that have 
ceased to interest me. I know the latter is 
always a wrench. The former may be im- 
possible. I shall not, be lonely. No one 
who reads is ever that. I may miss talk- 
ing. Perhaps that is a good thing. I may 
have talked too much. That does happen. 

Remember one thing — I am not in- 
accessible. I may now and then get an 
opportunity to talk again, and in a new 
background. Who knows? I am counting 
on nothing but the facts about me. So 
come on. Future. I Ve my back against the 
past. Anyway, as you see, it is too late to 
argue. I've crossed the Rubicon, and can 
return only when I have built a new bridge. 



II 

June 1 8, 1 91 4. 

That's right. Accept the situation. 
You will soon find that Paris will seem the 
same to you. Besides, I had really given 
all I had to give there. 

Indeed you shall know, to the smallest 
detail, just how the material side of my 
life is arranged, — all my comforts and 
discomforts, — since you ask. 

I am now absolutely settled into my 
little "hole" in the country, as you call it. 
It has been so easy. I have been here now 
nearly three weeks. Everything is in per- 
fect order. You would be amazed if you 
could see just how everything fell into 
place. The furniture has behaved itself 
beautifully. There are days when I won- 
der if either I or it ever lived anywhere 
else. The shabby old furniture with which 
you were long so familar just slipped 
right into place. I had not a stick too lit- 
tle, and could not have placed another 
piece. I call that "bull luck." 

I have always told you — you have not 

[ 14 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

always agreed — that France was the 
easiest place in the world to live in, and 
the love of a land in which to be a pauper. 
That is why it suits me. 

Don't harp on that word "alone." I 
know I am living alone, in a house that 
has four outside doors into the bargain. 
But you know I am not one of the "afraid" 
kind. I am not boasting. That is a char- 
acteristic, not a quality. One is afraid or 
one is not. It happens that I am not. 
Still, I am very prudent. You would laugh 
if you could see me "shutting up" for the 
night. All my windows on the ground floor 
are heavily barred. Such of the doors as 
have glass in them have shutters also. 
The window shutters are primitive affairs 
of solid wood, with diamond-shaped holes 
in the upper part. First, I put up the shut- 
ters on the door in the dining-room which 
leads into the garden on the south side; 
then I lock the door. Then I do a similar 
service for the kitchen door on to the front 
terrace, and that into the orchard, and 
lock both doors. Then I go out the salon 
door and lock the stable and the grange 
and take out the keys. Then I come into 
the salon and lock the door after me, and 
push two of the biggest bolts you ever saw._ 

[ IS ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

After which I hang up the keys, which are 
as big as the historic key of the Bastille, 
which you may remember to have seen 
at the Musee Carnavalet. Then I close 
and bolt all the shutters downstairs. I do 
it systematically every night — because I 
promised not to be foolhardy. I always 
grin, and feel as if it were a scene in a play. 
It impresses me so much like a tremendous 
piece of business — dramatic suspense — 
which leads up to nothing except my going 
quietly upstairs to bed. 

When it is all done I feel as I used to in 
my strenuous working days, when, after 
midnight, all the rest of the world — my 
little world — being calmly asleep, I cud- 
dled down in the corner of my couch to 
read ; — the world is mine ! 

Never in my life — anywhere, under 
any circumstances — have I been so well 
taken care of. I have Sifemme de menage — • 
a sort of cross between a housekeeper and a 
maid-of-all-work. She is a married woman, 
the wife of a farmer whose house is three 
minutes away from mine. My dressing- 
room window and my dining-room door 
look across a field of currant bushes to her 
house. I have only to blow on the dog's 
whistle and she can hear. Her name is 
1 i6 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Amelie, and she is a character, a nice one, 
but not half as much of a character as her 
husband — her second. She is a Parisian. 
Her first husband was a jockey, half 
Breton, half English. He died years ago 
when she was young: broke his neck in a 
big race at Auteuil. 

She has had a checkered career, and 
lived in several smart families before, to 
assure her old age, she married this gentle, 
queer little farmer. She is a great find for 
me. But the thing balances up beauti- 
fully, as I am a blessing to her, a new in- 
terest in her monotonous life, and she 
never lets me forget how much happier 
she is since I came here to live. She is very 
bright and gay, intelligent enough to be a 
companion when I need one, and well-bred 
enough to fall right into her proper place 
when I don't. 

Her husband's name is Abelard. Oh, 
yes, of course, I asked him about Heloise 
the first time I saw him., and I was stag- 
gered when the little old toothless chap 
giggled and said, "That was before my 
time." What do you think of that? Every 
one calls him "Pere Abelard," and about 
the house it is shortened down to "Pere." 
He is over twenty years older than Amelie 

[ 17 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

— well along in his seventies. He Is a na- 
tive of the commune — was born at Pont- 
aux-Dames, at the foot of the hill, right 
next to the old abbaye of that name. He 
is a type familiar enough to those who 
know French provincial life. His father 
was a well-to-do farmer. His mother was 
the typical mother of her class. She kept 
her sons under her thumb as long as she 
lived. Pere Abelard worked on his father's 
farm. He had his living, but never a sou in 
his pocket. The only diversion he ever had 
was playing the violin, which some passer 
in the commune taught him. When his 
parents died, he and his brothers sold the 
old place at Pont-aux-Dames to Coquelln, 
who was preparing to turn the historic old 
convent into a maison de retraite for aged 
actors, and he came up here on the hill and 
bought his present farm In this hamlet, 
where almost every one is some sort of a 
cousin of his. 

Oddly enough, almost every one of these 
female cousins has a history. You would 
not think it, to look at the place and the 
people, yet I fancy that it Is pretty univer- 
sal for women In such places to have "his- 
tories." You will see an old woman with a 
bronzed face — sometimes still handsome, 

[ i8 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

often the reverse — In her short skirt, her 
big apron tied round where a waist is not, 
her still beautiful hair concealed in a col- 
ored handkerchief. You ask the question 
of the right person, and you will discover 
that she is rich; that she is avaricious; that 
she pays heavy ta;Kes; denies herself all but 
the bare necessities; and that the founda- 
tion of her fortune dates back to an affaire 
du cxuTj or perhaps of interest, possibly of 
cupidity; and that very often the middle- 
aged daughter who still "lives at home 
with mother," had also had a profitable 
affaire arranged by mother herself. Every- 
thing has been perfectly convenable. Every 
one either knows about it or has forgotten 
it. No one is bothered or thinks the worse 
of her so long as she has remained of the 
*^ people" and put on no airs. But let her 
attempt to rise out of her class, or go up to 
Paris, and the Lord help her if she ever 
wants to come back, and, French fashion, 
end her days where she began them. 
This is typically, provincially French. 
When you come down here I shall tell you 
tales that will make Balzac and De Mau- 
passant look tame. 

You have no idea how little money these 
people spend. It must hurt them terribly 

[ 19 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

to cough up their taxes. They all till the 
land, and eat what they grow. Amelie's 
husband spends exactly four cents a week 
— to get shaved on Sunday. He can't 
shave himself. A razor scares him to death. 
He looks as if he were going to the guillo- 
tine when he starts for the barber's, but 
she will not stand for a beard of more than 
a week's growth. He always stops at my 
door on his way back to let his wife kiss his 
clean old face, all wreathed with smiles — 
the ordeal is over for another week. He 
never needs a sou except for that shave. 
He drinks nothing but his own cider: he 
eats his own vegetables, his own rabbits; 
he never goes anywhere except to the 
fields, — does not want to, — unless it is 
to play the violin for a dance or a fete. 
He just works, eats, sleeps, reads his news- 
paper, and is content. Yet he pays taxes 
on nearly a hundred thousand francs' worth 
of real estate. 

But, after all, this is not what I started 
to tell you — that was about my domestic 
arrangements. Amelie does everything 
for me. She comes early in the morning, 
builds a^fire, then goes across the field for 
the milk while water is heating. Then she 
arranges my bath, gets my coffee, tidies 

[ 20 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

up the house. She buys everything I 
need, cooks for me, waits on me, even 
mends for me, — all for the magnificent 
sum of eight dollars a month. It really 
Is n't as much as that, it is forty francs a 
month, which comes to about a dollar and 
eighty cents a week in your currency. She 
has on her farm everything in the way of 
vegetables that I need, from potatoes to 
"asparagras," from peas to tomatoes. She 
has chickens and eggs. Bread, butter, 
cheese, meat come right to the gate; so does 
the letter carrier, who not only brings my 
mail but takes It away. The only thing 
we have to go for is the milk. 

To make it seem all the more primitive 
there is a rickety old diligence which runs 
from Quincy — Huiry is really a suburb of 
Quincy — to Esbly twice a day, to con- 
nect with trains for Paris with which the 
branch road does not connect. It has an 
imperial, and when you come out to see 
me, at some future time, you will get a 
lovely view of the country from a top seat. 
You could walk the four miles quicker 
than the horse does, — It is uphill nearly 
all the way, — but time is no longer any 
object with me. Amelie has a donkey and 
a little cart to drive me to the station at 

[ 21 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Couilly when I take that line, or when I 
want to do an errand or go to the laun- 
dress, or merely to amuse myself. 

If you can really match this for a cheap, 
easy, simple way for an elderly person to 
live in dignity, I wish you would. It is far 
easier than living in Paris was, and living 
in Paris was easier for me than the States. 
I am sorry, but it is the truth. 

You ask me what I do with the "long 
days." My dear! they are short, and yet I 
am out of bed a little after four every 
morning. To be sure I get into bed again 
at half past eight, or, at latest, nine, every 
night. Of course the weather is simply 
lovely. As soon as I have made sure that 
my beloved panorama has not disappeared 
in the night I dress in great haste. My 
morning toilette consists of a long black 
studio apron such as the French children 
wear to school, — it takes the place of a 
dress, — felt shoes inside my sabots, a big 
hat, and long gardening-gloves. In that 
get-up I weed a little, rake up my paths, 
examine my fruit trees, and, at intervals, 
lean on my rake in a Maud Muller posture 
and gaze at the view. It is never the same 
two hours of the day, and I never weary of 
looking at it. 

[ 22 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

My garden would make you chortle 
with glee. You will have to take it by de- 
grees, as I do. I have a sort of bowing ac- 
quaintance with it myself — en masse, so 
to speak. I hardly know a thing in it by 
name. I have wall fruit on the south side 
and an orchard of plum, pear, and cherry 
trees on the north side. The east side is 
half lawn and half disorderly flower beds. 
I am going to let the tangle in the orchard 
grow at its own sweet will — that is, I 
am going to as far as Amelie allows me. 
I never admire some trailing, flowering 
thing there that, while I am admiring it, 
Amelie does not come out and pull it out 
of the ground, declaring it une salete and 
sure to poison the whole place if allowed to 
grow. Yet some of these same saletes are 
so pretty and grow so easily that I am 
tempted not to care. One of these trials 
of my life is what I am learning to know as 
liserone — we used to call it wild morning- 
glory. That I am forbidden to have — if 
I want anything else. But it is pretty. 

I remember years ago to have heard 
Ysolet, in a lecture at the Sorbonne, state 
that the "struggle for life" among the 
plants was fiercer and more tragic than 
that among human beings. It was mere 

[ 23 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

words to me then. In the short three 
weeks that I have been out here in my 
hilltop garden I have learned to know how 
true that was. Sometimes I am tempted 
to have a garden of weeds. I suppose my 
neighbors would object if I let them all go 
to seed and sow these sins of agriculture 
all over the tidy farms about me. 

Often these lovely mornings I take a 
long walk with the dog before breakfast. 
He is an Airedale, and I am terribly proud 
of him and my neighbors terribly afraid of 
him. I am half inclined to believe that he 
is as afraid of them as they are of him, but 
I keep that suspicion, for prudential rea- 
sons, to myself. At any rate, all passers 
keep at a respectful distance from me and 
him. 

Our usual walk is down the hill to the 
north, toward the shady route that leads 
by the edge of the canal to Meaux. We 
go along the fields, down the long hill 
until we strike into a footpath which leads 
through the woods to the road called 
"Paves du Roi" and on to the canal, from 
which a walk of five minutes takes us to 
the Marne. After we cross the road at the 
foot of the hill there is not a house, and the 
country is so pretty — undulating ground, 

[ 24 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

in every tint of green and yellow. From 
the high bridge that crosses the canal the 
picture is — well, is French-canally, and 
you know what that means — green- 
banked, tree-shaded, with a towpath bor- 
dering the straight line of water, and here 
and there a row of broad long canal-boats 
moving slowly through the shadows. 

By the time I get back I am ready for 
breakfast. You know I never could eat or 
drink early in the morning. I have my 
coffee in the orchard under a big pear tree, 
and I have the inevitable book propped 
against the urn. Needless to say I never 
read a word. I simply look at the pano- 
rama. All the same I have to have the 
book there or I could not eat, just as I 
can't go to sleep without books on the 
bed. 

After breakfast I write letters. Before I 
know it Amelie appears at the library 
door to announce that "Madame est ser- 
vie" — and the morning is gone. As I am 
alone, as a rule I take my lunch in the 
breakfast-room. It is on the north side of 
the house, and is the coolest room in the 
house at noon. Besides, it has a window 
overlooking the plain. In the afternoon I 
read and write and mend, and then I take 

[ 25 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

a light supper in the arbor on the east 
side of the house under a crimson rambler, 
one of the first ever planted here over 
thirty years ago. 

I must tell you about that crimson 
rambler. You know when I hired this 
house it was only a peasant's hut. In front 
of what is now the kitchen — it was then a 
dark hole for fuel — stood four dilapidated 
posts, moss-covered and decrepit, over 
which hung a tangle of something. It was 
what I called a "mess." I was not as edu- 
cated as I am now. I saw — it was winter 
— what looked to me an unsightly tangle 
of disorder. I ordered those posts down. 
My workmen, who stood in some awe of 
me, — I was the first American they had 
ever seen, — were slow in obeying. They 
did not dispute the order, only they did 
not execute it. 

One day I was very stern. I said to 
my head mason, "I have ordered that 
thing removed half a dozen times. Be so 
good as to have those posts taken down 
before I come out again." 

He touched his cap, and said, "Very 
well, madame." 

It happened that the next time I came 
out the weather had become spring-like. 
[ 26 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

The posts were down. The tangle that had 
grown over them was trailing on the 
ground — but it had begun to put out 
leaves. I looked at it — and for the first 
time it occurred to me to say, "What is 
that?" 

The mason looked at me a moment, and 
replied, "That, madamel That is a 'cream- 
son ramblaire' — the oldest one in the 
commune." 

Poor fellow, it had never occurred to 
him that I did not know. 

Seven feet to the north of the climbing- 
rose bush was a wide hedge of tall lilac 
bushes. So I threw up an arbor between 
them, and the crimson rambler now mounts 
eight feet in the air. It is a glory of color 
to-day, and my pride. But did n't I come 
near to losing it? 

The long evenings are wonderful. I sit 
Dut until nine, and can read until almost 
the last minute. I never light a lamp until 
[ go up to bed. That is my day. It seems 
Dusy enough to me. I am afraid it will — 
to you, still so willing to fight, still so ab- 
jorbed in the struggle, and still so over- 
■ond of your species — seem futile. Who 
cnows which of us is right ? — or if our 
iifference of opinion may not be a differ- 

[ 27 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

ence in our years? If all who love one 
another were of the same opinion, living 
would be monotonous, and conversation 
flabby. So cheer up. You are content. 
Allow me to be. 



Ill 

June 20, 1914. 

I HAVE just received your letter — the 
last, you say, that you can send before you 
sail away again for "The Land of the Free 
and the Home of the Brave," where you 
still seem to feel that it is my duty to re- 
turn to die. I vow I will not discuss that 
with you again. Poverty is an unpretty 
thing, and poverty plus old age simply 
horrid in the wonderful land which saw 
my birth, and to which I take off my sun- 
bonnet in reverent admiration, in much 
the same spirit that the peasants still un- 
cover before a shrine. But it is the land of 
the young, the energetic, and the ambi- 
tious, the ideal home of the very rich and 
the laboring classes. I am none of those — 
hence here I stay. I turn my eyes to the 
west often with a queer sort of am.azed 
pride. If I were a foreigner — of any race 
but French — I 'd work my passage out 
there in an emigrant ship. As it is, I did 
forty-five years of hard labor there, and I 
consider that I earned the freedom to die 
where I please. 

[ 29 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

t can see In "my mind's eye" the glitter 
in yours as you wrote — and underscored 
— "I '11 wager you spend half your days in 
writing letters back to the land you have 
willfully deserted. As well have stayed 
among us and talked — and you talk so 
much better than you write." Tut! tut! 
That is nasty. Of course I do not deny 
that I shall miss the inspiration of your 
contradictions — or do you call it re- 
partee.^ I scorn your arguments, and I 
hereby swear that you shall not worry 
another remonstrance from me. 

You ask me how it happens that I wan- 
dered in this direction, into a part of the 
country about which you do not remember 
to have ever heard me talk, when there 
were so many places that would have 
seemed to you to be more interesting. 
Well, this is more interesting than you 
think. You must not fancy that a place is 
not interesting because you can't find it 
in Hare, and because Henry James never 
talked about it. That was James's mis- 
fortune and not his fault. 

The truth is I did look in many more 
familiar directions before fortunate acci- 
dent led me here. I had an idea that I 
wanted to live on the heights of Mont- 

[ 30 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

morency, in the Jean Jacques Rousseau 
country. But it was terribly expensive — 
too near to Enghien and its Casino and 
baccarat tables. Then I came near to tak- 
ing a house near Viroflay, within walking 
distance of Versailles. But at the very 
mention of that all my French friends 
simply howled. "It was too near to 
Paris"; "it was the chosen route of the 
Apaches"; and so on and so forth. I did 
not so much care for the situation. It was 
too familiar, and it was not really country, 
it was only suburbs. But the house at- 
tracted me. It was old and quaint, and the 
garden was pretty, and it was high. Still 
it was too expensive. After that I found 
a house well within my means at Poigny, 
about an hour, by diligence, from Ram- 
bouillet. That did attract me. It was real 
country, but it had no view and the house 
was very small. Still I had got so tired of 
hunting that I was actually on the point 
of taking it when one of my friends acci- 
dentally found this place. If it had been 
made to order it could not have suited me 
better — situation, age, price, all just to 
my taste. I put over a year and a half 
into the search. Did I keep it to myself 
well.? 

[ 31 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Besides, the country here had a certain 
novelty" to me. I know the country on the 
other side of the Petit Morin, but all this 
is new to me except Meaux. At first the 
house did not look habitable to me. It was 
easily made so, however, and it has great 
possibilities, which will keep me busy for 
years. 

Although you do not know this part of 
the country, it has, for me, every sort of 
attraction — historical as well as pictur- 
esque. Its historical interest is rather for 
the student than the tourist, and I love it 
none the less for that. 

If ever you relent and come to see me, I 
can take you for some lovely walks. I can, 
on a Sunday afternoon, in good weather, 
even take you to the theater — what is 
more, to the theater to see the players of 
the Comedie Fran^aise. It is only half an 
hour's walk from my house to Pont-aux- 
Dames, where Coquelin set up his maison 
de retraite for aged actors, and where he 
died and is buried. In the old park, vv^here 
the du Barry used to walk in the days when 
Louis XVI clapped her in prison on a war- 
rant wrung from the dying old king, her 
royal lover, there is an open-air theater, 
and there, on Sundays, the actors of the 

[ 32 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Theatre Fran^ais play, within sight of the 
tomb of the founder of the retreat, under 
the very trees — and they are stately and 
noble — where the du Barry walked. 

Of course I shall only take you there 
if you insist. I have outgrown the play- 
house. I fancy that I am much more 
likely to sit out on the lawn and preach to 
you on how the theater has missed its 
mission than I am — unless you insist — 
to take you down to the hill to listen to 
Moliere or Racine. 

If, however, that bores you, — it would 
me, — you can sit under the trees and 
close your eyes while I give you a Stoddard 
lecture without the slides. I shall tell you 
about the little walled town of Crecy, still 
surrounded by its moat, where the tiny 
little houses stand in gardens with their 
backs on the moat, each with its tiny foot- 
bridge, that pulls up, just to remind you 
that it was once a royal city, with draw- 
bridge and portcullis, a city in which kings 
used to stay, and in which Jeanne d'Arc 
slept one night on her way back from 
crowning her king at Rheims: a city that 
once boasted ninety-nine towers. Half a 
dozen of these towers still stand. Their 
thick walls are now pierced with windows, in 

[ 33 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

which muslin curtains blow in the wind, to 
say that to-day they are the humble homes 
of simple people, and to remind you of 
what warfare was in the days when such 
towers were a defense. Why, the very 
garden in which you will be sitting when I 
tell you this was once a part of the royal 
estate, and the last Lord of the Land was 
the Duke de Penthievre. I thought that 
fact rather amusing when I found it out, 
considering that the house I came so near 
to taking at Poigny was on the Ram- 
bouillet estate where his father, the Duke 
de Toulouse, one of Louis XIV's illegiti- 
mate sons, died, where the Duke de Pen- 
thievre was born, and where he buried 
his naughty son, the Duke de Lamballe. 

Of course, while I am telling you things 
like this you will have to bring your im- 
agination into play, as very few vestiges 
of the old days remain. I still get just as 
much fun out of // y avait une foisy even 
when the "once on a time" can only be 
conjured up with closed eyes. Still, I can 
show you some dear little old chapels, and 
while I am telling you about it you will 
probably hear the far-off, sad tolling of a 
bell, and I shall say to you ^'Qa sonne a 
Bouleurs.^^ It will be the church bells at 

[ 34 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Bouleurs, a tiny, tree-shaded hamlet, on 
another hilltop, from which, owing to its 
situation, the bells, which rarely ring save 
for a funeral, can be heard at a great dis- 
tance, as they have rung over the valley 
for years. They sound so sad in the still 
air that the expression, Qa sonne a Bouleurs^ 
has come to mean bad luck. In all the 
towns where the bell can be heard, a man 
who is having bad luck at cards, or has 
made a bad bargain, or has been tricked 
in any way, invariably remarks, " Qa sonne 
a Bouleurs r 

I could show you something more mod- 
ern in the way of historical association. 
For example, from the road at the south 
side of my hill I can show you the Chateau 
de la Haute Maison, with its mansard and 
Louis XVI pavilions, where Bismarck and 
Favre had their first unsuccessful meeting, 
when this hill was occupied by the Germans 
In 1870 during the siege of Paris. And 
fifteen minutes' walk from here is the 
pretty Chateau de Conde, which was then 
the home of Casimir-Perier, and if you do 
not remember him as the President of the 
Republic who resigned rather than face 
the Dreyfus case, you may remember him 
as the father-in-law of Madame Simone, 

.[ 35 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

who unsuccessfully stormed the American 
theater, two years ago. 

You ask me how isolated I am. Well, I 
am, and I am not. My house stands in the 
middle of my garden. That is a certain 
sort of isolation. There is a house on the 
opposite side of the road, much nearer 
than I wish it were. Luckily it is rarely 
occupied. Still, when it is, it is over-occu- 
pied. At the foot of the hill — perhaps 
five hundred yards away — are the tiny 
hamlet of Joncheroy and the little village 
of Voisins. Just above me is the hamlet 
of Huiry — half a dozen houses. You see 
that is not sad. So cheer up. So far as I 
know the commune has no criminal rec- 
ord, and I am not on the route of tramps. 
Remember, please, that, in those last 
winters in Paris, I did not prove immune 
to contagions. There is nothing for me to 
catch up here — unless it be the gayety 
with which the air is saturated. 

You ask me also how it happens that I 
am living again "near by Quincy.^" As 
true as you live, I never thought of the 
coincidence. If you please, we pronounce 
it "Kansee." When I read your question 
I laughed. I remembered that Abelard, 
when he was first condenaned, retired to 
[ 36 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the Hermitage of Quincy, but when I took 
down Larousse to look it up, what do you 
think I found? Simply this and nothing 
more: "Quincy: Ville des Etats-Unis 
(Massachusetts), 28,000 habitants." 

Is n't that droll? However, I know that 
there was a Sire de Quincy centuries ago, 
so I will look him up and let you know 
what I find. 

The morning paper — always late here 
— brings the startling news of the assas- 
sination of the Crown Prince of Austria. 
What an unlucky family that has been! 
Franz Josef must be a tough old gentleman 
to have stood up against so many shocks. 
I used to feel so sorry for him when Fate 
dealt him another blow that would have 
been a "knock-out" for most people. But 
he has stood so many, and outlived hap- 
pier people, that I begin to believe that if 
the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, 
the hides, or the hearts, of some people are 
toughened to stand the gales of Fate. 

Well, I imagine that Austria will not 
grieve much — though she may be mad — 
over the loss of a none too popular crown 
prince, whose morganatic wife could never 
be crowned, whose children cannot in- 
herit, and who could only have kept the 

[ 37 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

throne warm for a while for the man who 
now steps into line a little sooner than he 
would have had this not happened. If a 
man will be a crown prince in these times 
he must take the consequences. We do get 
hard-hearted, and no mistake, when it is 
not in our family that the lightning strikes. 
The "Paths of Glory lead but to the 
grave," so what matters it, really, out by 
what door one goes.^ 

This will reach you soon after you ar- 
rive in the great city of tall buildings. 
More will follow, and I expect they will be 
so gay that you will rejoice to have even a 
postal tie with La Belle France, to which, 
if you are a real good American, you will 
come back when you die — if you do not 
before. 



IV 

July i6, 1914. 

Your Fourth of July letter came this 
morning. It was lively reading, especially 
coming so soon after my first Quatorze de 
juillet in the country. The day was a great 
contrast to the many remembrances I 
have of Bastille Day in Paris. How I re- 
member my first experience of that fete, 
when my bedroom window overlooked one 
of the squares where the band played for 
the three nights of dancing. That was a 
fierce experience after the novelty of the 
first night had worn off, when hour after 
hour the dance music droned on, and hour 
after hour the dancing feet on the pave- 
ment nearly drove me frantic. To offset it 
I have memories of the Champs-Elysees 
and the Place de I'Hotel de Ville turned 
into a fairyland. I am glad I saw all that. 
The memory hangs in my mind like a 
lovely picture. Out here it was all as still 
as — I was going to say Sunday, but I 
should have to say a New England Sunday, 
as out here Sunday is just like any other 

[ 39 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

day. There was not even a ringing of 
bells. The only difference there was to me 
was that Amelie drove Pere over to Cou- 
tevroult, on the other side of the valley of 
the Grand Morin, where he played for the 
dance, and did not get back until long 
after daylight. I did put out my flags in 
honor of the day. That was the extent of 
my celebrating. 

In the evening there was a procession at 
Voisins, and from Meaux and the other 
towns on the hill there was an occasional 
rocket. It was not really an exciting day. 

The procession at Voisins was a primi- 
tive affair, but, to me, all the prettier for 
that. It looked so quaint with its queer 
lanterns, its few flags, its children and 
men in blouses, strolling through the 
crooked, hilly streets of the old town, to 
the tap of the drum. No French proces- 
sion, except it be soldiers, ever marches. 
If you ever saw a funeral procession going 
through the street, or one going about a 
church, you do not need to be told that. 

I was glad that this little procession 
here kept so much of its old-time charac- 
ter, but I was sorry it was not gayer. Still, 
it was so picturesque that it made me re- 
gret anew, what I have so many times re- 

[ 40 ] 



4 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

gretted of late years, that so many of the 
old habits of country life in France are 
passing away, as they are, for that matter, 
all over Europe, along with ignorance and 
national costumes. 

I must tell you that up to three years 
ago it was the custom in this commune, 
which, simply because it is not on a rail- 
road, has preserved its old-days air and 
habits, for wedding and baptismal parties 
to walk in procession through the streets 
from the house to the church and back 
again. Pere Abelard used to head the pro- 
cession, playing on his violin. There has 
been but one event of that kind since I 
came, and I am afraid it will be the last. 
That was for the baptism of the first grand- 
child of a French officer who had married 
a woman born in this commune, and the 
older members of the family had a desire to 
keep up the old traditions. The church is 
at Quincy, just a step off the route nationale 
to Meaux. Pere walked ahead, — he could 
not be accused of marching, — fiddling 
away for dear life. The pretty young god- 
mother carried the baby, in its wonder- 
ful christening finery, walking between 
the grandmother and the father, and the 
guests, all in their gayest clothes, followed 

[ 41 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

on as they liked behind, all stepping out a 
little on account of the fiddle ahead. They 
came back from the church in the same 
way, only father carried the baby, and the 
godmother scattered her largesse among 
the village children. 

It is a pity that such pretty customs die 
out. Wedding parties must have looked so 
attractive going along these country roads.. 
The fashion that has replaced it is unat- 
tractive. To-day they think it much more 
chic to hire a big barge and drive down to 
Esbly and have a rousing breakfast and 
dance in the big hall which every country 
hotel has for such festivities. Such changes 
are in the spirit of the times, so I suppose 
one must not complain. I should not if 
people were any happier, but I cannot see 
that they are. However, I suppose that 
will come when the Republic is older. The 
responsibility which that has put on the 
people has made them more serious than 
they used to be. 

I don't blame you for laughing at the 
idea of me in a donkey cart. You would 
laugh harder if you could see the cart and 
me. I do look droll. But this is the land 
where nothing astonishes any one, thank 
Heaven. But you wait until I get my com- 

[ 42 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

plet de velours — which is to say my vel- 
veteens. I shall match up with the rig then, 
never fear. Rome was not built in a day, 
nor can a lady from the city turn into a 
country-looking lady in the wink of an eye. 
By the time you have sufficiently overcome 
your prejudices as to come out and see me 
with your own eyes, I'll fit into the land- 
scape and the cart in great style. 

Absolutely no news to write you, unless 
you will consider it news that my hedge of 
dahlias, which I planted myself a month 
ago, is coming up like nothing else in the 
world but Jack's Beanstalk. Nothing but 
weeds ever grew so rank before. Pere says 
I was too generous with my biogene — the 
latest French thing in fertilizers. But I did 
want them to be nourished in a rich soil — 
and come up quick. They did. I can actu- 
ally see them grow. I am almost afraid to 
tell you that they are over two feet high 
now. Of course you won't believe me. But 
it is not a fairy tale. I would not have be- 
lieved it myself if I had not seen it. 

Alas! I find that I cannot break myself of 
reading the newspapers, and reading them 
eagerly. It is all the fault of that nasty 
affair in Servia. I have a dim recollection 
that I was very flippant about it in my last 

[ 43 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

letter to you. After all, woman proposes 
and politics upset her proposition. There 
seems to be no quick remedy for habit, 
more 's the pity. It is a nasty outlook. We 
are simply holding our breaths here. 



■ July 30, 1 91 4. 

This will be only a short letter — more 
to keep my promise to you than because I 
feel in the mood to write. Events have 
broken that. It looks, after all, as if the 
Servian affair was to become a European 
affair, and that, what looked as if it might 
happen during the Balkan War is really 
coming to pass — a general European 
uprising. 

It is an odd thing. It seems it is an easy 
thing to change one's environment, but 
not so easy to change one's character. I am 
just as excited over the ugly business as I 
should have been had I remained near the 
boulevards, where I could have got a news- 
paper half a dozen times a day. I only get 
one a day, and this morning I got that one 
with difficulty. My " Figaro," which comes 
out by mail, has not come at all. 

Well, it seems that the so-called "alarm- 
ists" were right. Germany has not been 
turning her nation into an army just to 
divert her population, nor spending her 

[ 45 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

last mark on ships just to amuse herself, 
and keep Prince Henry busy, 

I am sitting here this morning, as I sup- 
pose all France is doing, simply holding my 
breath to see what England is going to do. 
I imagine there is small doubt about it. I 
don't see how she can do anything but 
fight. It is hard to realize that a big war 
is inevitable, but it looks like it. It was 
staved off, in spite of Germany's perfidy, 
during the Balkan troubles. If it has to 
come now, just imagine what it is going to 
mean! It will be the bloodiest aifair the 
world has ever seen — a war in the air, a 
war under the sea as well as on it, and 
carried out with the most effective man- 
slaughtering machines ever used in battle. 

I need not tell you — you know, we have 
so often talked about it — how I feel about 
war. Yet many times since I came to 
France to live, I have felt as if I could bear 
another one, if only it gave Alsace and 
Lorraine back to us — us meaning me and 
France. France really deserves her revenge 
for the humiliation of 1870 and that beastly 
Treaty of Frankfort. I don't deny that 
1870 was the making of modern France, or 
that, since the Treaty of Frankfort, as a 
nation she has learned a lesson of patience 

[ 46 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

that she sorely needed. But now that Ger- 
many is preparing — is really prepared to 
attack her again — well, the very hair on 
my head rises up at the idea. There have 
been times in the last ten years when I have 
firmly believed that she could not be con- 
quered again. But Germany! Well, I don't 
know. If she is, it will not be for lack of 
nerve or character. Still, it is no secret that 
she is not ready, or that the anti-military 
party is strong, — and with that awful 
Caillaux affair; I swore to myself that 
nothing should tempt me to speak of it. It 
has been so disgraceful: Still, it is so in the 
air just now that it has to be recognized as 
pitifully significant and very menacing to 
political unity. 

The tension here is terrible. Still, the 
faces of the men are stern, and every one is 
so calm — the silence is deadly. There is 
an absolute suspension of work in the fields. 
It is as if all France was holding its breath. 

One word before I forget it again. You 
say that you have asked me twice if I have 
any friend near me. I am sure I have 
already answered that — yes! I have a 
family of friends at Voulangis, about two 
miles the other side of Crecy-en-Brie. Of 
course neighbors do not see one another in 

[ 47 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the country as often as In the city, but 
there they are; so I hasten to relieve your 
mind just now, when there is a menace of 
war, and I am sitting tight on my hilltop 
on the road to the frontier. 



VI 

August 2, 1 91 4. 

Well, dear, what looked impossible fs 
evidently coming to pass. 

Early yesterday morning the garde cham- 
petre — who is the only thing in the way of 
a policeman that we have — marched up 
the road beating his drum. At every cross- 
road he stopped and read an order. I heard 
him at the foot of the hill, but I waited 
for him to pass. At the top of the hill he 
stopped to paste a bill on the door of the 
carriage-house on Pere Abelard's farm. 
You can imagine me, — in my long studio 
apron, with my head tied up in a muslin 
cap, — running up the hill to join the group 
of poor women of the hamlet, to read the 
proclamation to the armies of land and sea 
— the order for the mobilization of the 
French military and naval forces — headed 
by its crossed French flags. It was the first 
experience in my life of a thing like that. 
I had a cold chill down my spine as I real- 
ized that it was not so easy as I had thought 
to separate myself from Life. We stood 

[ 49 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

there together — a little group of women 
— and silently read it through — this com- 
mand for the rising up of a Nation. No 
need for the men to read it. Each with his 
military papers in his pocket knew the 
moment he heard the drum what it meant, 
and knew equally well his place. J was *a 
foreigner among them, but I forgot that, 
and if any of them remembered they made 
no sign. We did not say a word to one 
another. I silently returned to my garden 
and sat down. War again! This time war 
close by — not war about which one can 
read, as one reads it in the newspapers, as 
you will read it in the States, far away from 
it, but war right here — if the Germans 
can cross the frontier. 

It came as a sort of shock, though I might 
have realized it yesterday when several of 
the men of the commune came to say au 
revoir, with the information that they were 
joining their regiments, but I felt as if 
some way other than cannon might be 
found out of the situation. War had not 
been declared — has not to-day. Still, 
things rarely go to this length and stop 
there. Judging by this morning's papers 
Germany really wants it. She could have, 
had she wished, held stupid Austria back 

[ 50 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

from the throat of poor Servia, not yet 
recovered from her two Balkan wars. 

I imagine this letter will turn into a sort 
of diary, as it is difficult to say when I shall 
be able to get any mail matter off. All our 
communications with the outside world — 
except by road — were cut this morning by 
order of the War Bureau. Our railroad is 
the road to all the eastern frontiers — the 
trains to Belgium as well as to Metz and 
Strasbourg pass within sight of my garden. 
If you don't know what that means — just 
look on a map and you will realize that the 
army that advances, whether by road or by 
train, will pass by me. 

During the mobilization, which will take 
weeks, — not only is France not ready, all 
the world knows that her fortified towns 
are mostly only fortified on the map, — 
civilians, the mails, and such things m.ust 
make way for soldiers and war materials. 
I shall continue to write. It will make me 
feel in touch still; it will be something to 
do: besides, any time some one may go up 
to town by road and I thus have a chance 
to send it. 



VII 

Jugust 3, i9H' 

Well — war is declared. 

I passed a rather restless night. I fancy 
every one in France did. All night I heard 
a murmur of voices, such an unusual thing 
here. It simply meant that the town was 
awake and, the night being warm, every 
one was out of doors. 

All day to-day aeroplanes have been fly- 
ing between Paris and the frontier. Every- 
thing that flies seems to go right over my 
roof. Early this morning I saw two ma- 
chines meet, right over my garden, circle 
about each other as if signaling, and fly off 
together. I could not help feeling as if one 
chapter of Wells's "War in the Air" had 
come to pass. It did make trie realize how 
rapidly the aeroplane had developed into a 
real weapon of war. I remember so well, 
no longer ago than Exposition year, — 
that was 1900, — that I was standing, one 
day, in the old Galerie des Machines^ with 
a young engineer from Boston. Over our 
heads was a huge model of a flying ma- 

[ 52 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

chine. It had never flown, but it was the 
nearest thing to success that had been 
accomplished — and it expected to fly- 
some time. So did Darius Green, and peo- 
ple were still skeptical. As he looked up at 
it, the engineer said: "Hang it all, that 
dashed old thing will fly one day, but I shall 
probably not live to see it." 

He was only thirty at that time, and it 
was such a few years after that it did fly, 
and no time at all, once it rose in the air to 
stay there, before it crossed the Channel. 
It is wonderful to think that after centu- 
ries of effort the thing flew in my time — 
and that I am sitting in my garden to-day, 
watching it sail overhead, like a bird, look- 
ing so steady and so sure. I can see them 
for miles as they approach and for miles 
after they pass. Often they disappear from 
view, not because they have passed a hori- 
zon line, but simply because they have 
passed out of the range of my vision — 
becoming smaller and smaller, until they 
seem no bigger than a tiny bird, so small 
that if I take my eyes off the speck in the 
sky I cannot find it again. It is awe-com- 
pelling to remember how these cars in the 
air change all military tactics. It will be 
almost impossible to make any big move- 

[ S3 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

merit that may not be discovered by the 
opponent. 

Just after breakfast my friend from 
Voulangis drove over in a great state of 
excitement, with the proposition that I 
should pack up and return with her. She 
seemed alarmed at the idea of my being 
alone, and seemed to think a group of us 
was safer. It was a point of view that had 
not occurred to me, and I was not able 
to catch it. Still, I was touched at her 
thoughtfulness, even though I had to say 
that I proposed to stay right here. When 
she asked me what I proposed to do if the 
army came retreating across my garden, I 
instinctively laughed. It seems so impos- 
sible this time that the Germans can pass 
the frontier, and get by Verdun and TouL 
All the same, that other people were think- 
ing it possible rather brought me up stand- 
ing. I just looked at the little house I had 
arranged such a little time ago — I have 
only been here two months. 

She had come over feeling pretty glum 
— my dear neighbor from Voulangis. She 
went away laughing. At the gate she said, 
"It looks less gloomy to me than it did 
when I came. I felt such a brave thing 
driving over here through a country pre- 

[ 54 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

paring for war. I expected you to put a 
statue up in your garden ^To a Brave 
Lady.'" 

I stood in the road watching her drive 
away, and as I turned back to the house 
it suddenly took on a very human sort of 
look. There passed through my mind a 
sudden realization, that, according to my 
habit, I had once again stuck my feet in the 
ground of a new home — and taken root. 
It is a fact. I have often looked at people 
who seem to keep foot-free. I never can. 
If I get pulled up violently by the roots, if I 
have my earthly possessions pruned away, 
I always hurry as fast as I can, take root 
in a new place, and proceed to sprout a new 
crop of possessions which fix me there. I 
used, when I was younger, to envy people 
who could just pack a bag and move on. 
I am afraid that I never envied them 
enough to do as they did. If I had I should 
have done it. I find that life is pretty logi- 
cal. It is like chemical action — given cer- 
tain elements to begin with, contact with 
the fluids of Life give a certain result. After 
all I fancy every one does about the best 
he can with the gifts he has to do with. So 
I imagine we do what is natural to us; if 
we have the gift of knowing what we want 

[ 55 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

and wanting it hard enough we get it. If 
we don't, we compromise. 

I am closing this up rather hurriedly as 
one of the boys who joins his regiment at 
Fontainebleau will mail it in Paris as he 
passes through. I suppose you are glad 
that you got away before this came to pass. 



VIII 

August lo, 1914. 

I HAVE your cable asking me to come 
"home" as you call it. Alas, my home is 
where my books are — they are here. 
Thanks all the same. 

It is a week since I wrote you — and 
what a week. We have had a sort of inter- 
mittent communication with the outside 
world since the 6th, when, after a week of 
deprivation, we began to get letters and an 
occasional newspaper, brought over from 
Meaux by a boy on a bicycle. 

After we were certain, on the 4th of 
August, that war was being declared all 
around Germany and Austria, and that 
England was to back France and Russia, a 
sort of stupor settled on us all. Day after 
day Amelie would run to the mairie at 
Quincy to read the telegraphic bulletin — 
half a dozen lines of facts — that was all 
we knew from day to day. It is all we 
know now. 

Day after day I sat in my garden watch- 
ing the aeroplanes flying over my head, and 

[ 57 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

wishing so hard that I knew what they 
knew. Often I would see five in the day, 
and one day ten. Day after day I watched 
the men of the commune on their way to 
join their classe. There was hardly an hour 
of the day that I did not nod over the hedge 
to groups of stern, silent men, accompanied 
by their women, and leading the children 
by the hand, taking the short cut to the 
station which leads over the hill, right by 
my gate, to Couilly. It has been so thrill- 
ing that I find myself forgetting that it is 
tragic. It is so different from anything I 
ever saw before. Here is a nation — which 
two weeks ago was torn by political dissen- 
sion — suddenly united, and with a spirit 
that I have never seen before. 

I am old enough to remember well the 
days of our Civil War, when regiments of 
volunteers, with flying flags and bands of 
music, marched through our streets in 
Boston, on the way to the front. Crowds 
of stay-at-homes, throngs of women and 
children lined the sidewalks, shouting de- 
liriously, and waving handkerchiefs, in- 
spired by the marching soldiers, with guns 
on their shoulders, and the strains of mar- 
tial music, varied with the then popular 
"The girl I left behind me," or, "When 

[ 58 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

this cruel war is over." But this is quite 
different. There are no marching soldiers, 
no flying flags, no bands of music. It is the 
rising up of a Nation as one man — all 
classes shoulder to shoulder, with but one 
idea — *'Lift up your hearts, and long live 
France." I rather pity those who have not 
seen it. 

Since the day when war was declared, 
and when the Chamber of Deputies — all 
party feeling forgotten — stood on its feet 
and listened to Paul Deschanel's terse, re- 
markable speech, even here in this little 
commune, whose silence is broken only by 
the rumbling of the trains passing, in view 
of my garden, on the way to the frontier, 
and the footsteps of the groups on the way 
to the train, I have seen sights that have 
moved me as nothing I have ever met in 
life before has done. Day after day I have 
watched the men and their families pass 
silently, and an hour later have seen the 
women come back leading the children. 
One day I went to Couilly to see if it was 
yet possible for me to get to Paris. I hap- 
pened to be in the station when a train was 
going out. Nothing goes over the line yet 
but men joining their regiments. They 
were packed in like sardines. There were 

[ 59 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

no uniforms — just a crowd of men — men 
in blouses, men in patched jackets, well- 
dressed men — no distinction of class; and 
on the platform the women and children 
they were leaving. There was no laughter, 
none of the gayety with which one has so 
often reproached this race — but neither 
were there any tears. As the crowded train 
began to move, bare heads were thrust out 
of windows, hats were waved, and a great 
shout of "Vive la France" was answered 
by piping children's voices, and the choked 
voices of women — "Vive FArmee"; and 
when the train was out of sight the women 
took the children by the hand, and quietly 
climbed the hill. 

Ever since the 4th of August all our 
crossroads have been guarded, all our rail- 
way gates closed, and also guarded — ■ 
guarded by men whose only sign of being 
soldiers is a cap and a gun, men in blouses 
with a mobilization badge on their left 
arms, often in patched trousers and sabots^ 
with stern faces and determined eyes, 
and one thought — "The country is in 
danger." 

There is a crossroad just above my house, 
which commands the valley on either side, 
and leads to a little hamlet on the route 
[ 60 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

nationale from Couilly to Meaux, and Is 
called "La Demi-Lune" — why "Half- 
Moon" I don't know. It was there, on the 
6th, that I saw, for the first time, an armed 
barricade. The gate at the railway crossing 
had been opened to let a cart pass, when 
an automobile dashed through Saint- 
Germain, which is on the other side of the 
track. The guard raised his bayonet in the 
air, to command the car to stop -and show 
its papers, but it flew by him and dashed 
up the hill. The poor guard — it was his 
first experience of that sort — stood star- 
ing after the car; but the idea that he ought 
to fire at it did not occur to him until it 
was too late. By the time it occurred to 
him, and he could telephone to the Demi- 
Lune, it had passed that guard in the same 
way — and disappeared. It did not pass 
Meaux. It simply disappeared. It is still 
known as the "Phantom Car." Within 
half an hour there was a barricade at the 
Demi-Lune mounted by armed men — too 
late, of course. However, it was not really 
fruitless, — that barricade, - — as the very 
next day they caught three Germans there, 
disguised as Sisters of Charity — papers all 
in order — and who would have got by, 
after they were detected by a little boy's 

[ 6i 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

calling attention to their ungloved hands, 
if it had not been for the number of armed 
old men on the barricade. 

What makes things especially serious 
here, so near the frontier, and where the 
military movements must be made, is the 
presence of so many Germans, and the bit- 
ter feeling there is against them. On the 
night of August 2, just when the troops 
were beginning to move east, an attempt 
was made to blow up the railroad bridge at 
lie de Villenoy, between here and Meaux. 
The three Germans were caught with the 
dynamite on them — so the story goes — 
and are now in the barracks at Meaux. 
But the most absolute secrecy is preserved 
about all such things. Not only is all 
France under martial law: the censorship 
of the press is absolute. Every one has to 
carry his papers, and be provided with a 
passport for which he is liable to be asked 
in simply crossing a road. 

Meaux is full of Germans. The biggest 
department shop there is a German enter- 
prise. Even Couilly has a German or two, 
and we had one in our little hamlet. But 
they've got to get out. Our case is rather 
pathetic. He was a nice chap, employed 
in a big fur house in Paris. He came to 
[ 62 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

France when he was fifteen, has never been 
back, consequently has never done his 
military service there. Oddly enough, for 
some reason, he never took out his naturali- 
zation papers, so never did his service here. 
He has no relatives in Germany — that is 
to say, none with whom he has kept up 
any correspondence, he says. He earns a 
good salary, and has always been one of 
the most generous men in the commune, 
but circumstances are against him. Even 
though he is an intimate friend of our 
mayor, the commune preferred to be rid 
of him. He begged not to be sent back to 
Germany, so he went sadly enough to a 
concentration camp, pretty well convinced 
that his career here was over. Still, the 
French do forget easily. 

Couilly had two Germans. One of them 
— the barber — got out quick. The other 
did not. But he was quietly informed by 
some of his neighbors — with pistols in 
their hands — that his room was better 
than his company. 

The barber occupied a shop in the one 
principal street in the village, which is, by 
the way, a comparatively rich place. He 
had a front shop, which was a cafe, with a 
well-fitted-up bar. The back, with a well- 

[ 63 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

dressed window on the street, full of toilette 
articles, was the barber and hairdressing-. 
room, very neatly arranged, with modern 
set bowls and mirrors, cabinets full of tow- 
els, well-filled shelves of all the things that 
make such a place profitable. You should 
see it now. Its broken windows and doors 
stand open to the weather. The entire 
interior has been "efficiently" wrecked. 
It is as systematic a work of destruction as 
I have ever seen. Not a thing was stolen, 
but not an article was spared. All the 
bottles full of things to drink and all the 
glasses to drink out of are smashed, so are 
counters, tables, chairs, and shelving. In 
the barber shop there is a litter of broken 
porcelain, broken combs, and smashed-up 
chairs and boxes among a wreck of hair 
dyes, perfumes, hrillantine, and torn tow- 
els, and an odor of aperitifs and cologne 
over it all. 

Every one pretends not to know when it 
happened. They say, " It was found like 
that one morning." Every one goes to look 
at it — no one enters, no one touches any- 
thing. They simply say with a smile of 
scorn, "Good — and so well done." 

There are so many things that I wish you 
could see. They would give you such a new 
[ 64 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

point of view regarding this race — tra- 
ditionally so gay, so indifferent to many 
things that you consider moral, so fond of 
their individual comfort and personal pleas- 
ure, and often so rebellious to discipline. 
You would be surprised — surprised at 
their unity, surprised at their seriousness, 
and often touched by their philosophical 
acceptance of it all. 

Amelie has a stepson and daughter. The 
boy — named Marius — like his father 
plays the violin. Like many humble musi- 
cians his music is his life and he adds hand- 
somely to his salary as a clerk by playing 
at dances and little concerts, and by giving 
lessons in the evening. Like his father he is 
very timid. But he accepted the war with- 
out a word, though nothing is more foreign 
to his nature. It brought it home to me — ■ 
this rising up of a Nation in self-defense. 
It is not the marching into battle of an 
army that has chosen soldiering. It is the 
marching out of all the people — of every 
temperament — the rich, the poor, the 
timid and the bold, the sensitive and the 
hardened, the ignorant and the scholar — 
all men, because they happen to be males, 
called on not only to cry, "Vive la France," 
but to see to it that she does live if dying 

1 65 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

for her can keep her alive. It is a compelling 
idea, is n't it? 

Amelie's stepdaughter is married to a 
big burly chap by the name of Georges 
Godot. He is a thick-necked, red-faced 
man — in the dynamite corps on the rail- 
road, the construction department. He is 
used to hardships. War is as good as any- 
thing else to him. When he came to say 
"good-bye" he said, "Well, if I have the 
luck to come back — so much the better. 
If I don't, that will be all right. You can 
put a placque down below in the cemetery 
with * Godot, Georges: Died for the coun- 
try ' ; and when my boys grow up they can 
say to their comrades, *Papa, you know, 
he died on the battlefield.' It will be a sort 
of distinction I am not likely to earn for 
them any other way"; and off he went. 
Rather fine for a man of that class. 

Even the women make no cry. As for 
the children — even when you would think 
that they were old enough to understand 
the meaning of these partings they make 
no sign, though they seem to understand 
all the rest of it well enough. There is n't 
a boy of eight in our commune who cannot 
tell you how it all came about, and who is 
not just now full of stories of 1870, which 
[ 66 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

he has heard from grandma and grandpa, 
for, as is natural, every one talks of 1870 
now. I have lived among these people, 
loved them and believed in them, even 
when their politics annoyed me, but I con- 
fess that they have given me a surprise. 



IX 

August 17, 1914. 

I HAVE Belgium on my soul. Brave little 
country that has given new proof of its 
courage and nobility, and surprised the 
world with a ruler who is a man, as well as 
king. It occurs to me more than ever to-day 
in what a wonderful epoch we have lived. 
I simply can't talk about it. The suspense 
is so great. I heard this morning from an 
officer that the English troops are landing, 
though he tells me that in London they 
don't yet know that the Expedition has 
started. If that is true, it is wonderful. Not 
a word in the papers yet, but your press is 
not censored as ours is. I fancy you know 
these things in New York before we do, 
although we are now getting a newspaper 
from Meaux regularly. But there is never 
anything illuminating in it. The attitude 
of the world to the Belgian question is a 
shock to me. I confess to have expected 
more active indignation at such an outrage. 

Everything is very quiet here. Our little 
commune sent two hundred men only, but 
[ 68 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

to take two hundred able-bodied men away 
makes a big hole, and upsets life in many 
ways. For some days we were without 
bread: bakers gone. But the women took 
hold and, though the bread is not yet very 
good, it serves and will as long as flour 
holds out. No one complains, though we 
already lack many things. No merchan- 
dise can come out yet on the railroads, all 
the automobiles and most of the horses are 
gone, and shops are shy of staple things. 

Really I don't know which are the more 
remarkable, the men or the women. You 
may have read the proclamation of the 
Minister of Agriculture to the women of 
France, calling on them to go into the fields 
and get in the crops and prepare the ground 
for the sowing of the winter wheat that the 
men on returning might not find their fields 
neglected nor their crops lost. You should 
have seen the old men and the women and 
the youngsters respond. It is harvest-time, 
you know, just as it was in the invasion of 
1870. 

In a few weeks it will be time to gather 
the fruit. Even now it is time to pick the 
black currants, all of which go to England 
to make the jams and jellies without which 
no English breakfast table is complete. 

i 69 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

For days now the women and children 
have been climbing the hill at six in the 
morning, with big hats on their heads, 
deep baskets on their backs, low stools in 
their hands. There is a big field of black- 
currant bushes beside my garden to the 
south. All day, in the heat, they sit under 
the bushes picking away. At sundown they 
carry their heavy baskets to the weighing- 
machine on the roadside at the foot of the 
hill, and stand in line to be weighed in and 
paid by the English buyers for Crosse and 
Blackwell, Beach, and such houses, who 
have, I suppose, some special means of 
transportation. 

That work is, however, the regular work 
for the women and children. Getting in 
the grain is not. Yet if you could see them 
take hold of it you would love them. The 
old men do double work. Amelie's hus- 
band is over seventy. His own work in his 
fields and orchard would seem too much 
for him. Yet he and Amelie and the don- 
key are in the field by three o'clock every 
morning, and by nine o'clock he is march- 
ing down the hill, with his rake and hoe on 
his shoulder, to help his neighbors. 

There is many a woman working in the 
fields to-day who was not trained to it. I 

[ 70 •] 



A Hilltop on the Marne , 

have a neighbor, a rich peasant, whose two 
sons are at the front. Her only daughter 
married an officer in the Engineer Corps. 
When her husband joined his regiment she 
came home to her mother with her Httle 
boy. I see her every day, in a short skirt 
and a big hat, leading her boy by the hand, 
going to the fields to help her mother. If 
you don't think that is fine, I do. It is only 
one of many cases right under my eyes. 

There are old men here who thought that 
their days of hard work were over, who are 
in the fields working like boys. There is 
our blacksmith — old Pere Marie — lame 
with rheumatism, with his white-haired 
wife working in the fields from sunrise to 
sunset. He cheerfully limps up the hill in 
his big felt slippers, his wife carrying the 
lunch basket, and a tiny black-and-tan 
English dog called "Missy," who is the 
family baby, and knows lots of tricks, trot- 
ting behind, "because," as he says, "she is 
so much company." The old blacksmith 
is a veteran of 1870, and was for a long 
time a prisoner at Konigsburg. He likes 
nothing better than to rest a bit on a big 
stone at my gate and talk of 1870. Like all 
Frenchmen of his type he is wonderfully 
intelligent, full of humor, and an omnivo- 

[ 71 ] 



' A Hilltop on the Marne 

rous reader. Almost every day he has a bit 
of old newspaper in his pocket out of which 
he reads to la dame Americaine as he calls 
me, not being able to pronounce my name. 
It is usually something illuminating about 
the Germans, when it is not something 
prophetic. It is wonderful how these old 
chaps take it all to heart. 

All the time my heart is out there in the 
northeast. It is not my country nor my 
war — yet I feel as if it were both. All my 
French friends are there, all my neighbors, 
and any number of English friends will 
soon be, among them the brother of the 
sculptor you met at my house last winter 
and liked so much. He is with the Royal 
Field Artillery. His case is rather odd. He 
came back to England in the spring, after 
six years in the civil service, to join the 
army. His leave expired just in time for 
him to reenter the army and see his first 
active service in this war. Fortunately 
men seem to take it all as a matter of 
course. That consoles some, I find. 

I have just heard that there are two 
trains a day on which civilians can go up 
to Paris if there are places left after 
the army is accommodated. There is no 
guaranty that I can get back the same 

[ 72 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

day. Still, I am going to risk it. I am afraid 
to be any longer without money, though 
goodness knows what I can do with it. 
Besides, I find that all my friends are fly- 
ing, and I feel as if I should like to say 
"good-bye" — I don't know why, but I 
feel like indulging the impulse. Anyway, 
I am going to try it. I am going armed with 
every sort of paper — provisional passport 
from our consul, permis de sejour from my 
mayor here, and a local permit to enter and 
leave Paris, which does not allow me to 
stay inside the fortifications after six o'clock 
at night, unless I get myself identified at 
the prefecture of the arrondissement in 
which I propose to stay and have my pass- 
port vised. 



X 

August 24, 1 91 4. 

I SEEM to be able to get my letters off to 
you much more regularly than I dared to 
hope. 

I went up to Paris on the 19th, and had 
to stay over one night. The trip up was 
long and tedious, but interesting. There 
were soldiers everywhere. It amused me 
almost to tears to see the guards all along 
the line. We hear so much of the wonderful 
equipment of the German army. Germany 
has been spending fortunes for years on 
its equipment. French taxpayers have 
kicked for years against spending public 
moneys on war preparations. The guards 
all along the railroad were not a jot better 
got up than those in our little commune. 
There they stand all along the track in their 
patched trousers and blouses and sabots^ 
with a band round the left arm, a broken 
soldier cap, and a gun on the shoulder. 
Luckily the uniform and shaved head do 
not make the soldier. 

Just before we reached Chelles we saw 
the first signs of actual war preparations, 

[ 74 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

as there we ran inside the wire entangle- 
ments that protect the approach to the 
outer fortifications at Paris, and at Pantin 
we saw the first concentration of trains 
— miles and miles of made-up trains all 
carrying the Red Cross on their doors, and 
line after line of trucks with gray ammuni- 
tion wagons, and cannons. We were being 
constantly held up to let trainloads of sol- 
diers and horses pass. In the station we 
saw a long train being made up of men 
going to some point on the line to join 
their regiments. It was a crowd of men who 
looked the lower laboring class. They were 
in their working clothes, many of them 
almost in rags, each carrying in a bundle, 
or a twine bag, his few belongings, and 
some of them with a loaf of bread under the 
arm. It looked as little martial as possible 
but for the stern look in the eyes of even 
the commonest of them. I waited on the 
platform to see the train pull out. There 
was no one to see these men oif. They all 
seemed to realize. I hope they did. I re- 
membered the remark of the woman re- 
garding her husband when she saw him go: 
"After all, I am only his wife. France is 
his mother"; and I hoped these poor men, 
to whom Fate seemed not to have been 

[ 75 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

very kind, had at least that thought In the 
back of their minds. 

I found Paris quiet, and every one calm 
— that is to say, every one but the foreign- 
ers, struggling like people in a panic to 
escape. In spite of the sad news — Brussels 
occupied Thursday, Namur fallen Mon- 
day — there is no sign of discouragement, 
and no sign of defeat. If it were not for 
the excitement around the steamship offices 
the city would be almost as still as death. 
But all the foreigners, caught here by the 
unexpectedness of the war, seemed to be 
fighting to get off by the same train and 
the same day to catch the first ship, and 
they seemed to have little realization that, 
first of all, France must move her troops 
and war material. I heard it said — It may 
not be true — that some of the consular 
officers were to blame for this, and that 
there was a rumor abroad among foreigners 
that Paris was sure to be invested, and that 
foreigners had been advised to get out, so 
that there should be as few people Inside 
the fortifications as possible. This rumor, 
however, was prevalent only among for- 
eigners. No French people that I saw 
seemed to have any such feeling. 

Apart from the excitement which pre- 

[ 1^ ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

vailed in the vicinity of the steamship 
offices and banks the city had a deserted 
look. The Paris that you knew exists no 
longer. Compared with it this Paris is a 
dead city. Almost every shop is closed, 
and must be until the great number of men 
gone to the front can be replaced in some 
way. There are streets in which every 
closed front bears, under a paper flag 
pasted on shutter or door, a sign saying, 
** Closed on account of the mobilization"; 
or, "All the men with the colors." 

There are almost no men in the streets. 
There are no busses or tramways, and cabs 
and automobiles are rare. Some branches 
of the underground are running at certain 
hours, and the irregular service must con- 
tinue until women, and men unfit for mili- 
tary service, replace the men so suddenly 
called to the flag, and that will take time, 
especially as so many of the organizers as 
well as conductors and engineers have gone. 
It is the same with the big shops. How- 
ever, that is not important. No one is in 
the humor to buy anything except food. 

It took me a long time to get about. I 
had to walk everywhere and my friends 
live a long way apart, and I am a miserable 
walker. I found it impossible to get back 

[ 77 ] 



A Hilltop on the AIarne 

that night, so I took refuge with one of my 
friends who is sailing on Saturday. Every 
one seems to be sailing on that day, and 
most of them don't seem to care much how 
they get away — "ameliorated steerage," 
as they call it, seems to be the fate of many 
of them. I can assure you that I was glad 
enough to get back the next day. Silent 
as it is here, it is no more so than Paris, and 
not nearly so sad, for the change is not so 
great. Paris is no longer our Paris, lovely 
as it still is. 

I do not feel in the mood to do much. 
I work in my garden intermittently, and 
the harvest bug {h?tc rouge we call him 
here) gets in his work unintermittently on 
me. If things were normal this introduc- 
tion to the hete rouge would have seemed to 
me a tragedy. As it is, it is unpleasantly 
unimportant. I clean house intermittently; 
read intermittently; write letters intermit- 
tently. That reminds me, do read Leon 
Daudet's "Fantomes et Vivantes" — the 
first volumes of his memoirs. He is a ter- 
rible example of ''^ Le fils a fapa^ I don't 
know why it Is that a vicious writer, ab- 
solutely lacking in reverence, can hold 
one's attention so much better than a 
kindly one can. In this book Daudet sim- 

[ 7S 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

ply smashes idols, tears down illusions, 
dances gleefully on sacred traditions, and 
I lay awake half the night reading him, — 
and forgot the advancing Germans. The 
book comes down only to 1880, so most of 
the men he writes about are dead, and most 
of them, like Victor Hugo, for example, 
come off very sadly. 

Well, I am reconciled to living a long 
time now, — much longer than I wanted 
to before this awful thing came to pass, — 
just to see all the mighty good that will 
result from the struggle. I am convinced, 
no matter what happens, of the final re- 
sult. I am sure even now, when the Ger- 
mans have actually crossed the frontier, 
that France will not be crushed this time, 
even if she be beaten down to Bordeaux, 
with her back against the Bay of Biscay. 
Besides, did you ever know the English 
bulldog to let go.^ But it is the horror of 
such a war in our times that bears so 
heavily on my soul. After all, "civiliza- 
tion" is a word we have invented, and its 
meaning is hardly more than relative, just 
as is the word "religion.'^ 

There are problems in the events that 
the logical spirit finds it hard to face. In 
every Protestant church the laws of Moses 

[ 79 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

are printed on tablets on either side of the 
pulpit. On those laws our civil code is 
founded. "Thou shalt not kill," says the 
law. For thousands of years the law has 
punished the individual who settled his 
private quarrels with his fists or any more 
effective weapon, and reserved to itself the 
right to exact "an eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth." And here we are to- 
day, in the twentieth century, w^hen in- 
telligent people have long been striving 
after a spiritual explanation of the mean- 
ing of life, trying to prove its upward trend, 
trying to beat out of it materialism, en- 
deavoring to find in altruism a road to hap- 
piness, and governments can still find no 
better way to settle their disputes than 
wholesale slaughter, and that with weapons 
no so-called civilized man should ever have 
invented nor any so-called civilized gov- 
ernment ever permitted to be made. The 
theory that the death penalty was a pre- 
ventive of murder has long ago been ex- 
ploded. The theory that by making war 
horrible, war could be prevented, is being 
exploded to-day. 

And yet — I know that if the thought 
be taken out of life that it is worth while to 
die for an idea a great factor in the making 
[ 80 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

of national spirit will be gone. I know that 
a long peace makes for weakness in a race. 
I KNOW that without war there is still 
death. To me this last fact is the consola- 
tion. It is finer to die voluntarily for an 
idea deliberately faced, than to die of old 
age in one's bed; and the grief of parting 
no one ever born can escape. Still it is 
puzzling to us simple folk — the feeling 
that fundamental things do not change: 
that the balance of good and evil has not 
changed. We change our fashions, we 
change our habits, we discover now and 
then another of the secrets Nature has 
hidden, that delving man may be kept busy 
and interested. We pride ourselves that 
science at least has progressed, that we are 
cleaner than our progenitors. Yet we are 
no cleaner than the Greeks and Romans 
in the days when Athens and Rome ruled 
the world, nor do we know in what cycle 
all we know to-day was known and lost. 
Oh, I can hear you claiming more happi- 
ness for the masses! I wonder. There is 
no actual buying and selling in open slave 
markets, it is true, but the men who built 
the Pyramids and dragged the stone for 
Hadrian's Villa, were they any worse off 
really than the workers in the mines to- 

[ 8i ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

day? Upon my soul, I don't know. Life 
is only a span between the Unknown and 
the Unknowable. Living is made up in all 
centuries of just so many emotions. We 
have never, so far as I know, invented any 
new one. It is too bad to throw these things 
at you on paper which can't answer back 
as you would, and right sharply I know. 

Nothing going on here except the pass- 
ing now and then of a long line of Paris 
street busses on the way to the front. They 
are all mobilized and going as heroically to 
the front as if they were human, and going 
to get smashed up just the same. It does 
give me a queer sensation to see them 
climbing this hill. The little Montmartre- 
Saint-Pierre bus, that climbs up the hill to 
the funicular in front of Sacre-Coeur, came 
up the hill bravely. It was built to clinib 
a hill. But the Bastille-Madeleine and 
the Ternes-Fille de Calvaine, and Saint- 
Sulpice-Villette just groaned and panted 
and had to have their traction changed 
every few steps. I thought they would 
never get up, but they did. 

Another day it was the automobile de- 
livery wagons of the Louvre, the Bon 
Marche, the Prin temps. Petit- Saint- 
Thomas, La Belle Jardiniere, Potin — all 

[ 82 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the automobiles with which you are so 
familiar in the streets of Paris. Of course 
those are much lighter, and came up 
bravely. As a rule they are all loaded. It 
is as easy to take men to the front, and 
material, that way as by railroad, since the 
cars go. Only once have I seen any at- 
tempt at pleasantry on these occasions. 
One procession went out the other day 
with all sorts of funny inscriptions, some 
not at all pretty, many blackguarding the 
Kaiser, and of course one with the inevit- 
able '^ A Berlin,^' the first battle-cry of 
1870. This time there has been very little 
of that. I confess it gave me a kind of 
shiver to see "^ Berlin — pour notre 
plaisir " all over the bus. *' On to Berlin ! " 
I don't see that that can be hoped for un- 
less the Germans are beaten to a finish on 
the Rhine and the allied armies cross Ger- 
many as conquerors, unopposed. If they 
only could! It would only be what is due 
to Belgium that King Albert should lead 
the procession "Under the Lindens." But 
I doubt if the maddest war optimist hopes 
for anything so well deserved as that. I don't 
dare to, sure as I am of seeing Germany 
beaten to her knees before the war is closed. 



XI 

September 8, 1914. 

Oh, the things I have seen and felt since 
I last wrote to you over two weeks ago. 
Here I am again cut off from the world, 
and have been since the first of the month. 
For a week now I have known nothing of 
what was going on in the world outside the 
limits of my own vision. For that matter, 
since the Germans crossed the frontier our 
news of the war has been meager. We got 
the calm, constant reiteration — "Left 
wing — held by the English — forced to 
retreat a little." All the same, the general 
impression was, that in spite of that, "all 
was well." I suppose it was wise. 

On Sunday week, — that was August 
30, — Amelie walked to Esbly, and came 
back with the news that they were rushing 
trains full of wounded soldiers and Belgian 
refugies through toward Paris, and that the 
ambulance there was quite insufficient for 
the work it had to do. So Monday and 
Tuesday we drove down in the donkey 
cart to carry bread and fruit, water and 
cigarettes, and to "lend a hand." 

[ 84 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

It was a pretty terrible sight. There were 
long trains of wounded soldiers. There was 
train after train crowded with Belgians — • 
well-dressed women and children (evi- 
dently all in their Sunday best) — packed 
on to open trucks, sitting on straw, in the 
burning sun, without shelter, covered with 
dust, hungry and thirsty. The sight set me 
to doing some hard thinking after I got 
home that first night. But it was not until 
Tuesday afternoon that I got my first hint 
of the truth. That afternoon, while I was 
standing on the platform, I heard a drum 
beat in the street, and sent Amelie out to 
see what was going on. She came back at 
once to say that it was the garde champetre 
calling on the inhabitants to carry all their 
guns, revolvers, etc., to the mairie before 
sundown. That meant the disarming of 
our departement, and it flashed through my 
mind that the Germans must be nearer 
than the official announcements had told us. 

While I stood reflecting a moment, — it 
looked serious, — I saw approaching from 
the west side of the track a procession of 
wagons. Amelie ran down the track to the 
crossing to see what it meant, and came 
back at once to tell me that they were evac- 
uating the towns to the north of us. 

[ 8s ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I handed the basket of fruit I was hold- 
ing Into a coach of the train just pulling 
into the station, and threw my last pack- 
age of cigarettes after it; and, without a 
word, Amelie and I went out into the 
street, untied the donkey, climbed into the 
wagon, and started for home. 

By the time we got to the road which 
leads east to Montry, whence there is a 
road over the hill to the south, it was full 
of the flying crowd. It was a sad sight. The 
procession led in both directions as far as 
we could see. There were huge wagons of 
grain; there were herds of cattle, flocks of 
sheep ; there were wagons full of household 
effects, with often as many as twenty peo- 
ple sitting aloft; there were carriages; there 
were automobiles with the occupants 
crowded in among bundles done up in 
sheets; there were women pushing over- 
loaded handcarts; there were women push- 
ing baby-carriages; there were dogs and 
cats, and goats; there was every sort of a 
vehicle you ever saw, drawn by every sort 
of beast that can draw, from dogs to oxen, 
from boys to donkeys. Here and there 
there was a man on horseback, riding along 
the line, trying to keep it moving in order 
and to encourage the weary. Every one 
[ 86 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

was calm and silent. There was no talking, 

no complaining. J v .^s 

The whole road was, however, blocked, \ 
and, even had our donkey wished to pass, ■ 

— which she did not, — we could not. We 
simply fell into the procession, as soon as 
we found a place. Amelie and I did not say 
a word to each other until we reached the 
road that turns off to the Chateau de 
Conde; but I did speak to a man on horse- 
back, who proved to be the intendant of 
one of the chateaux at Daumartin, and with 
another who was the mayor. I simply 
asked from where these people had come, 
and was told that they were evacuating 
Daumartin and all the towns on the plain 
between there and Meaux, which meant 
that Monthyon, Neufmortier, Penchard, 
Chauconin, Barcy, Chambry, — in fact, all 
the villages visible from my garden were 
being evacuated by order of the military 
powers. 

One of the most disquieting things about 
this was to see the effect of the procession 
as it passed along the road. All the way 
from Esbly to Montry people began to 
pack at once, and the speed with which 
they fell into the procession was discon- 
certing. 

[ 87 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

When we finally escaped from the crowd 
into the poplar-shaded avenue which 
leads to the Chateau de Conde, I turned 
to look at Amelie for the first time. I had 
had time to get a good hold of myself. 

"Well, Amelie?" I said. 

"Oh, madame," she replied, " I shall stay." 

"And so shall I," I answered; but I 
added, "I think I must make an effort to 
get to Paris to-morrow, and I think you had 
better come with me. I shall not go, of 
course, unless I am sure of being able to 
get back. We may as well face the truth: 
if this means that Paris is in danger, or if 
it means that we may in our turn be forced 
to move on, I must get some money so as to 
be ready." 

"Very well, madame," she replied as 
cheerfully as if the rumble of the proces- 
sion behind us were not still in our ears. 
r The next morning — that was Septem- 
Der 2 — I woke just before daylight. There 
was a continual rumble in the air. At first 
I thought it was the passing of more re- 
fugies on the road. I threw open my blinds, 
and then realized that the noise was in the 
other direction — from the route nationale, 
I listened. I said to myself, "If that is not 
artillery, then I never heard any." 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Sure enough, when Amelle came to get 
breakfast, she announced that the English 
soldiers were at the Demi-Lune. | The in- 
fantry was camped there, and the artillery- 
had descended to Couilly and was mount- 
ing the hill on the other side of the Morin 
— between us and Paris. 

I said a sort of "Hm," and told her to 
ask Pere to harness at once. As we had no 
idea of the hours of the trains, or even if 
there were any, it was best to get to Esbly 
as early as possible. It was nine o'clock 
when we arrived, to find that there should 
be a train at half past. The station was full. 
I hunted up the chef de gare, and asked him 
if I could be sure of being able to return if 
I went up to Paris. 

He looked at me in perfect amazement. 

"You want to come back?" he asked. 

"Sure," I replied. 

"You can," he answered, "if you take 
a train about four o'clock. That may be 
the last." 

I very nearly said, "Jiminy-cricket!" 

The train ran into the station on time, 
but you never saw such a sight. It was 
packed as the Brookline street-cars used 
to be on the days of a baseball game. Men 
were absolutely hanging on the roof; 

[ 89 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

women were packed on the steps that led 
up to the imperials to the third-class 
coaches. It was a perilous-looking sight. 
I opened a dozen coaches — all packed, 
standing room as well as seats, which is 
ordinarily against the law. I was about to 
give it up when a man said to me, "Ma- 
dame, there are some coaches at the rear 
that look as if they were empty." 

I made a dash down the long platform, 
yanked open a door, and was about to ask 
if I might get in, when I saw that the coach 
was full of wounded soldiers in khaki, lying 
about on the floor as well as the seats. I 
was so shocked that if the station master, 
who had run after me, had not caught me 
I should have fallen backward. 

"Sh! madame," he whispered, "I'll find 
you a place"; and in another moment I 
found myself, with Amelie, in a compart- 
ment where there were already eight 
women, a young man, two children, and 
heaps of hand-luggage — bundles in sheets, 
twine bags just bulging, paper parcels, and 
valises. Almost as soon as we were in, the 
train pulled slowly out of the station. 

I learned from the women that Meaux 
was being evacuated. No one was remain- 
ing but the soldiers in the barracks and the 

[ 90 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

archbishop. They had been ordered out by 
the army the night before, and the rail- 
road was taking them free. They were 
escaping with what they could carry in 
bundles, as they could take no baggage. 
Their calm was remarkable — not a com- 
plaint from any one. They were of all 
classes, but the barriers were down. 

The young man had come from farther 
up the line — a newspaper chap, who had 
given me his seat, and was sitting on a 
bundle. I asked him if he knew where the 
Germans were, and he replied that on this 
wing they were at Compiegne, that the 
center was advancing on Coulommier, but 
he did not know where the Crown Prince's 
division was. 

I was glad I had made the effort to get 
to town, for this began to look as if they 
might succeed in arriving before the circle 
of steel that surrounds Paris, and God 
knows what good that seventy-five miles 
of fortifications will be against the long- 
range cannon that battered down Liege. 
I had only one wish — to get back to my 
hut on the hill; I did not seem to want any- 
thing else. 

Just before the train ran into Lagny — 
our first stop — I was surprised to see 

[ 91 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

British soldiers washing their horses in the 
river, so I was not surprised to find the 
station full of men in khaki. They were 
sleeping on the benches along the wall, and 
standing about in groups. As to many of 
the French on the train this was their first 
sight of the men in khaki, and as there 
were Scotch there in their kilts, there was 
a good deal of excitement. 

The train made a long stop in the effort 
to put more people into the already over- 
crowded coaches. I leaned forward, wish- 
ing to get some news, and the funny thing 
was that I could not think how to speak 
to those boys in English. You may think 
that an affectation. It was n't. Finally I 
desperately sang out: — 

"Hulloa, boys." 

You should have seen them dash for 
the window. I suppose that their native 
tongue sounded good to them so far from 
home. 

"Where did you come from.^" I asked. 

"From up yonder — a place called La 
Fere," one of them replied. 

"What regiment?" I asked. 

"Any one else here speak English .f*" he 
questioned, running his eyes along the 
faces thrust out of the windows. 

[ 92 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I told him no one did. 

"Well," he said, "we are all that is left 
of the North Irish Horse and a regiment of 
Scotch Borderers." 

"What are you doing here?" 

"Retreating — and waiting for orders. 
How far are we from Paris .^" 

I told him about seventeen miles. He 
sighed, and remarked that he thought they 
were nearer, and as the train started I had 
the idea in the back of my head that these 
boys actually expected to retreat inside 
the fortifications. La! la! 

Instead of the half-hour the train usually 
takes to get up from here to Paris, we were 
two hours. 

I found Paris much more normal than 
when I was there two weeks ago, though 
still quite unlike itself; every one perfectly 
calm and no one with the slightest suspicion 
that the battle line was so near — hardly 
more than ten miles beyond the outer 
forts. I transacted my business quickly — 
saw only one person, which was wiser than 
I knew then, and caught the four o'clock 
train back — we were almost the only pas- 
sengers. 

I had told Pere not to come after us — 
it was so uncertain when we could get 

[ 93 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

back, and I had always been able to get 
a carriage at the hotel in Esbly. 

We reached Esbly at about six o'clock to 
find the stream of emigrants still passing, 
although the roads were not so crowded 
as they had been the previous day. I ran 
over to the hotel to order the carriage — 
to be told that Esbly was evacuated, the 
ambulance had gone, all the horses had been 
sold that afternoon to people who were fly- 
ing. There I 'was faced with a walk of five 
miles — lame and tired. Just as I had 
made up my mind that what had to be 
done could be done, — die or no die, — 
Amelie came running across the street to 
say: — 

"Did you ever see such luck? Here is the 
old cart horse of Cousine Georges and the 
wagon 1" 

Cousine Georges had fled, it seems, 
since we left, and her horse had been left 
at Esbly to fetch the schoolmistress and 
her husband. So we all climbed in. The 
schoolmistress and her husband did not go 
far, however. We discovered before we had 
got out of Esbly that Couilly had been 
evacuated during the day, and that a great 
many people had left Voisins; that the 
civil government had gone to Coutevroult; 

[ 94] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

that the Croix Rouge had gone. So the 
schoolmistress and her husband, to whom 
all this was amazing news, climbed out of 
the wagon, and made a dash back to the 
station to attempt to get back to Paris. 1 
do hope they succeeded. 

Amelie and I dismissed the man who had 
driven the wagon down, and jogged on by 
ourselves. I sat on a board in the back of 
the covered cart, only too glad for any sort 
of locomotion which was not "shank's 
mare." 

Just after we left Esbly I saw first an 
English officer, standing in his stirrups and 
signaling across a field, where I discovered 
a detachment of English artillery going 
toward the hill. A little farther along the 
road we met a couple of English ofiicers — 
pipes in their mouths and sticks in their 
hands — strolling along as quietly and 
smilingly as if there were no such thing as 
war. Naturally I wished to speak to them. 
I was so shut in that I could see only di- 
rectly in front of me, and if you ever rode 
behind a big cart horse I need not tell you 
that although he walks slowly and heavily 
he walks steadily, and will not stop for any 
pulling on the reins unless he jolly well 
chooses. As we approached the officers, 

' [ 95 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I leaned forward and said, "Beg your par- 
don," but by the time they realized that 
they had been addressed in English we had 
passed. I yanked at the flap at the back 
of the cart, got it open a bit, looked out to 
find them standing in the middle of the 
road, staring after us in amazement. 

The only thing I had the sense to call 
out was: — 

"Where 'd you come from.^" 

One of them made an emphatic gesture 
with his stick, over his shoulder in the 
direction from which they had come. 

"Where are you going?" I called. 

He made the samiC gesture toward Esbly, 
and then we all laughed heartily, and by 
that time we were too far apart to con- 
tinue the interesting conversation, and 
that was all the enlightenment I got out of 
that meeting. The sight of them and their 
cannon made me feel a bit serious. I 
thought to myself: "If the Germans are 
not expected here — well, it looks like it." 
We finished the journey in silence, and I 
was so tired when I got back to the house 
that I fell into bed, and only drank a glass 
of milk that Amelie insisted on pouring 
down my throat. 



XII 

September 5, 1914. 

You can get some idea of how exhausted 
I was on that night of Wednesday, Sep- 
tember 2, when I tell you that I waked the 
next morning to find that I had a picket 
at my gate. I did not know until Amelie 
came to get my coffee ready the next morn- 
ing — that was Thursday, September 3 — 
can it be that it is only five days ago ! She 
also brought me news that they were pre- 
paring to blow up the bridges on the Marne; 
that the post-office had gone; that the Eng- 
lish were cutting the telegraph wires. 

While I was taking my coffee, quietly, 
as if it were an everyday occurrence, she 
said: "Well, madame, I imagine that we 
are going to see the Germans. Pere is break- 
ing an opening into the underground pas- 
sage under the stable, and we are going to 
put all we can out of sight. Will you please 
gather up what you wish to save, and it can 
be hidden there .^" 

I don't know that I ever told you that 
all the hill is honeycombed with those old 

[ 97 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

subterranean passages, like the one we saw 
at Provins. They say that they go as far 
as Crecy-en-Brie, and used to connect the 
royal palace there with one on this hill. 

Naturally I gave a decided refusal to 
any move of that sort, so far as I was con- 
cerned. My books and portraits are the 
only things I should be eternally hurt to 
survive. To her argument that the books 
could be put there, — there was room 
enough, — I refused to listen. I had no 
idea of putting my books underground to 
be mildewed. Besides, if it had been pos- 
sible I would not have attempted it — and 
it distinctly was im_possible. I felt a good 
deal like the Belgian refugies I had seen, — 
all so well dressed; if my house was going 
up, it was going up in its best clothes. I 
had just been uprooted once — a horrid 
operation — and I did not propose to do it 
again so soon. To that my mind was made 

up. ^ 

Luckily for me — for Amelie was as set 
as I was — the argument was cut short by 
a knock at the front door. I opened it to 
find standing there a pretty French girl 
whom I had been seeing every day, as, 
morning and evening, she passed my gate 
to and from the railway station. Sooner 

[ 98 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

or later I should have told you about her 
if all this excitement had not put it out of 
my mind and my letters. I did not know 
her name. I had never got to asking Ame- 
lie who she was, though I was a bit sur- 
prised to find any one of her type here 
where I had supposed there were only 
farmers and peasants. 

She apologized for presenting herself so 
informally: said she had come, '^de la parte 
de maman,^^ to ask me what I proposed to 
do. I replied at once, "I am staying." 

She looked a little surprised: said her 
mother wished to do the same, but that 
her only brother was with the colors; that 
he had confided his young wife and two 
babies to her, and that the Germans were 
so brutal to children that she did not dare 
risk it. 

"Of course, you know," she added, 
"that every one has left Couilly; all the 
shops are closed, and nearly every one has 
gone from Voisins and Quincy. The may- 
or's wife left last night. Before going she 
came to us and advised us to escape at 
once, and even found us a, horse and cart 
— the trains are not running. So mother 
thought that, as you were a foreigner, and 
all alone, we ought not to go without at 

[ 99 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

least offering you a place In the wagon — 
the chance to go with us." 

I was really touched, and told her so, 
but explained that I should stay. She was 
rather insistent — said her mother would 
be so distressed at leaving me alone with 
only a little group of women and children 
about me, who might, at the last moment, 
be panic-stricken. 

I explained to her as well as I could that 
I was alone in the world, poor myself, and 
that I could not see myself leaving all that 
I valued, — my home; to have which I 
had made a supreme effort, and for which 
I had already a deep affection, — to join 
the band of refugies, shelterless, on the road, 
or to look for safety in a city, which, if the 
Germans passed here, was likely to be 
besieged and bombarded. I finally con- 
vinced her that my mind was made up. I 
had decided to keep my face turned to- 
ward Fate rather than run away from it. 
To me it seemed the only way to escape 
a panic — a thing of which I have always 
had a horror. 

Seeing that nothing could make me 

change my mind, we shook hands, wished 

each other luck, and, as she turned away, 

she said, in her pretty French: "I am sorry 

[ 100 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

it IS disaster that brought us together, but 
I hope to know you better when days are 
happier"; and she went down the hilL 

When I returned to the dining-room I 
found that, in spite of my orders, Amehe 
was busy putting my few pieces of silver, 
and such bits of china from the buffet as 
seemed to her valuable, — her ideas and 
mine on that point do not jibe, — into the 
waste-paper baskets to be hidden under- 
ground. 

I was too tired to argue. While I stood 
watching her there was a tremendous ex- 
plosion. I rushed into the garden. The 
picket, his gun on his shoulder, was at the 
gate. 

"What was that?" I called out to him. 

"Bridge," he replied. "The English di- 
visions are destroying the bridges on the 
Marne behind them as they cross. That 
means that another division is over." 

I asked him which bridge it was, but of 
course he did not know. While I was stand- 
ing there, trying to locate it by the smoke, 
an English officer, who looked of middle 
age, tall, clean-cut, rode down the road on 
a chestnut horse, as slight, as clean-cut, 
and well groomed as himself. He rose in 
his stirrups to look off at the plain before 

\ loi 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

he saw me. Then he looked at me, then up 
at the flags flying over the gate, — saw 
the Stars and Stripes, — smiled, and dis- 
mounted. 

"American, I see," he said. 

I told him I was. 

"Live here.f*" said he. 

I told him that I did. 

"Staying on?" he asked. 

I answered that it looked like it. 

He looked me over a moment before he 
said, "Please invite me into your garden 
and show me that view." 

I was delighted. I opened the gate, and 
he strolled in and sauntered with a long, 
slow stride — a long-legged stride — out 
on to the lawn and right down to the 
hedge, and looked off. 

"Beautiful," he said, as he took out his 
field-glass, and turned up the map case 
which hung at his side. "What town is 
that?" he asked, pointing to the fore- 
ground. 

I told him that it was Mareuil-on-the- 
Marne. 

"How far off is it?" he questioned. 

I told him that it was about two miles, 
and Meaux was kbout the same distance 
beyond it. 

[ 102 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

"What town Is that?" he asked, pointing 
to the hill. 

I explained that the town on the horizon 
was Penchard — not really a town, only 
a village; and lower down, between Pen- 
chard and Meaux, were Neufmortler and 
Chauconln. 

All this time he was studying his map. 

"Thank you. 1 have It," he said. "It 
is a lovely country, and this Is a wonderful 
view of it, the best I have had." 
' For a few minutes he stood studying It 
in silence — alternatively looking at his 
map and then through his glass. Then he 
dropped his map, put his glasses into the 
case, and turned to me — and smiled. 
He had a winning smile, sad and yet con- 
soling, which lighted up a bronzed face, 
stern and weary. It was the sort of smile 
to which everything was permitted. 

"Married?" he said. 

You can imagine what he was like when 
I tell you that I answered right up, and 
only thought It was funny hours after — • 
or at least I shook my head cheerfully. 

"You don't live here alone?" he asked. 

"But I do," I replied. 

He looked at me bravely a moment, then 
off at the plain. 

[ 103 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

''Lived here long?" he questioned. 

I told him that I had lived in this house 
only three months, but that I had lived in 
France for sixteen years. 

Without a word he turned back toward 
the house, and for half a minute, for the 
first time in my life, I had a sensation that 
it looked strange for me to be an exile in 
a country that was not mine, and with no 
ties. For a penny I would have told him the 
history of my life. Luckily he did not give 
me time. He just strode down to the gate, 
and by the time he had his foot in the stir- 
rup I had recovered. 

"Is there anything I can do for you, cap- 
tain.^" I asked. 

He mounted his horse, looked down at 
me. Then he gave me another of his rare 
smiles. 

"No," he said, "at this moment there 
is nothing that you can do for me^ thank 
you ; but if you could give my boys a cup 
of tea, I imagine that you would just about 
save their lives." And nodding to me, he 
said to the picket, "This lady is kind 
enough to offer you a cup of tea," and he 
rode off, taking the road down the hill to 
Voisins. 

I ran into the house, put on the kettle, 
[ 104 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

ran up the road to call Amelie, and back to 
the arbor to set the table as well as I could. 
The whole atmosphere was changed, I was 
going to be useful. 

I had no idea how many men I was going 
to feed. I had only seen three. To this day 
I don't know how many I did feed. They 
came and came and came. It reminded me 
of hens running toward a place where an- 
other hen has found something good. It 
did not take me many minutes to discover 
that these men needed something more 
substantial than tea. Luckily I had brought 
back from Paris an emergency stock of 
things like biscuit, dry cakes, jam, etc., for 
even before our shops were closed there was 
mighty little in them. For an hour and a 
half I brewed pot after pot of tea, opened 
jar after jar of jam and jelly, and tin after 
tin of biscuit and cakes, and although it 
was hardly hearty fodder for men, they put 
it down with a relish. I have seen hun- 
gry men, but never anything as hungry as 
these boys. 

I knew little about military discipline — - 
less about the rules of active service; so I 
had no idea that I was letting these hun- 
gry men — and evidently hunger laughs 
at laws — break all the regulations of the 

[ 105 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

army. Their guns were lying about In any 
old place; their kits were on the ground; 
their belts were unbuckled. Suddenly the 
captain rode up the road and looked over 
the hedge at the scene. The men were sit- 
ting on the benches, on the ground, any- 
where, and were all smoking my best Egyp- 
tian cigarettes, and I was running round 
as happy as a queen, seeing them so con- 
tented and comfortable. 

It was a rude awakening when the cap- 
tain rode up the street. 

There was a sudden jumping up, a hur- 
ried buckling up of belts, a grab for kits 
and guns, and an unceremonious cut for 
the gate. I heard a volley from the officer. 
I marked a serious effort on the part of 
the men to keep the smiles off their faces 
as they hurriedly got their kits on their 
backs and their guns on their shoulders, 
and, rigidly saluting, dispersed up the hill, 
leaving two very straight men marching 
before the gate as if they never in their 
lives had thought of anything but picket 
duty. 

The captain never even looked at me, 

but rode up the hill after his men. A few 

minutes later he returned, dismounted at 

the gate, tied his horse, and came in. I was 

[ io6 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

a bit confused. But he smiled one of those 
smiles of his, and I got right over it. 

"Dear little lady," he said, ''I wonder if 
there is any tea left for me?" 

Was there! I should think so; and I 
thought to myself, as I led the way into 
the dining-room, that he was probably just 
as hungry as his men. 

While I was making a fresh brew he said 
to me : — 

"You must forgive my giving my men 
Hades right before you, but they de- 
served it, and know it, and under the cir- 
cumstances I imagine they did not mind 
taking it. I did not mean you to give them 
a party, you know. Why, if the major had 
ridden up that hill — and he might have 
■ — and seen that party inside your garden, 
I should have lost my commission and those 
boys got the guardhouse. These men are 
on active service." 

Then, while he drank his tea, he told me 
why he felt a certain indulgence for them 
— these boys who were hurried away from 
England without having a chance to take 
leave of their families, or even to warn 
them that they were going. 

"This is the first time that they have 
had a chance to talk to a woman who 

[ 107 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

speaks their tongue since they left Eng- 
land; I can't begrudge it to them and they 
know it. But discipline is discipline, and 
if I had let such a breach- of it pass they 
would have no respect for me. They un- 
derstand. They had no business to put 
their guns out of their hands. What would 
they have done if the detachment of 
Uhlans we are watching for had dashed up 
that hill — as they might have?" 

Before I could answer or remark on this 
startling speech there was a tremendous ex- 
plosion, which brought me to my feet, with 
the inevitable, — 

"What's that.?" 

He took a long pull at his tea before he 
replied quietly, — 

"Another division across the Marne." 

Then he went on as if there had been no 
interruption : — ' 

"This Yorkshire regiment has had hard 
luck. Only one other regiment in the 
Expedition has had worse. They have 
marched from the Belgian frontier, and 
they have been in four big actions in the 
retreat — Mons, Cambrai, Saint-Quentin, 
and La Fere. Saint-Quentin was pretty 
rough luck. We went into the trenches a 
full regiment. We came out to retreat again 
[ io8 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

with four hundred men — and I left my 
younger brother there." 

I gasped; I could not find a word to say. 
He did not seem to feel it necessary that 
I should. He simply winked his eyelids, 
stiffened his stern mouth, and went right 
on; and I forgot all about the Uhlans: — 

"At La Fere we lost our commissary 
on the field. It was burned, and these lads 
have not had a decent feed since — that 
was three days ago. We have passed 
through few towns since, and those were 
evacuated, — drummed out; and fruit 
from the orchards on the roadsides is about 
all they have had — hardly good feed for 
a marching army in such hot weather. 
Besides, we were moving pretty fast — 
but in order" — to get across the Marne, 
toward which we have been drawing the 
Germans, and in every one of these battles 
we have been fighting with one man to 
their ten." 

I asked him where the Germans were. 

"Can't say," he replied. 

"And the French.?" 

"No idea. We've not seen them — yet. 
We understood that we were to be rein- 
forced at Saint-Quentin by a French de- 
tachment at four o'clock. They got there 

[ 109 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

at eleven — the battle was over — and 
lost. But these boys gave a wonderful ac- 
count of themselves, and in spite of the 
disaster retreated in perfect order." 

Then he told me that at the last moment 
he ordered his company to lie close in the 
trench and let the Germans come right up 
to them, and not to budge until he or- 
dered them to give them what they hate — 
the bayonet. The Germans were within a 
few yards when a German automobile car- 
rying a machine gun bore down on them 
and discovered their position, but the Eng- 
lish sharpshooters picked off the five men 
the car carried before they could fire a 
shot, and after that it was every man for 
himself — what the French call ^'sauve 
qui peuty 

The Uhlans came back to my mind, and 
it seemed to me a good time to ask him what 
he was doing here. Oddly enough, in spite of 
the several shocks I had had, and perhaps 
because of his manner, I was able to do it 
as if it was the sort of tea-table conversation 
to which I had always been accustomed. 

"What are you doing here.f"' I said. 

"Waiting for orders," he answered. 

"And for Uhlans?" 

"Oh," replied he, "if incidentally while 
[ no ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

we are sitting down here to rest, we could 
rout out a detachment of German cavalry, 
which our aeroplane tells us crossed the 
Marne ahead of us, we would like to. 
Whether this is one of those flying squads 
they are so fond of sending ahead, just to 
do a little terrorizing, or whether they 
escaped from the battle of La Fere, we 
don't know. I fancy the latter, as they do 
not seem to have done any harm or to have 
been too anxious to be seen." 

I need not tell you that my mind was 
acting like lightning. I remembered, in 
the pause, as I poured him another cup of 
tea, and pushed the jam pot toward him, 
that Amelie had heard at Voisins last night 
that there were horses in the woods near 
the canal; that they had been heard neigh- 
ing in the night; and that we had jumped 
to the conclusion that there were English 
cavalry there. I mentioned this to the 
captain, but for some reason it did not seem 
to make much impression on him; so I did 
not insist, as there was something that 
seemed more important which I had been 
getting up the courage to ask him. It had 
been on my lips all day. I put it. 

"Captain," I asked, "do you think there 
is any danger in my staying here.^" 

[ III ] 



A Hilltop on the IMarne 

He took a long drink before he an- 
swered : — 

"Little lady, there is danger every- 
where between Paris and the Channel. 
Personally — since you have stayed until 
getting away will be difficult — I do not 
really believe that there is any reason why 
you should not stick it out. You may have 
a disagreeable time. But I honestly be- 
lieve you are running no real risk of having 
more than that. At all events, I am going 
to do w^iat I can to assure your personal 
safety. As we understand it • — no one 
really knows anything except the orders 
given out — it is not intended that the 
Germans shall cross the Marne here. But 
who knows .^ Anyway, if I move on, each 
division of the Expeditionary Force that 
retreats to this hill will know that you are 
here. If it is necessary, later, for you to 
leave, you will be notified and precautions 
taken for your safety. You are not 
afraid?" 

I could only tell him, "Not yet," but I 
could not help adding, "Of course I am not 
so stupid as to suppose for a moment that 
you English have retreated here to amuse 
yourselves, or that you have dragged your 
artillery up the hill behind me just to ex- 

[ 112 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

ercise your horses or to give your gunners 
a pretty promenade." 

He threw back his head and laughed 
aloud for the first time, and I felt better. 

"Precautions do not always mean a 
battle, you know"; and as he rose to his 
feet he called my attention to a hole in his 
coat, saying, "It was a miracle that I came 
through Saint-Quentin with a whole skin. 
The bullets simply rained about me. It 
was pouring — I had on a mackintosh — 
which made me conspicuous as an officer, 
if my height had not exposed me. Every 
German regiment carries a number of 
sharpshooters whose business is to pick 
off the officers. However, it was evidently 
not my hour." 

As we walked out to the gate I asked 
him if there was anything else I could do 
for him. 

"Do you think," he replied, "that you 
could get me a couple of fresh eggs at half- 
past seven and let me have a cold wash- 
up?" 

"Well, rather," I answered, and he rode 
away. 

As soon as he was gone one of the picket 
called from the road to know if they could 
have "water and wash." 

[ 113 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I told them of course they could — to 
come right in. 

He said that they could not do that, but 
that if they could have water at the gate 
— and I did not mind — they could wash 
up in relays in the road. So Pere came and 
drew buckets and buckets of water, and 
you never saw such a stripping and such 
a slopping, as they washed and shaved — 
and with such dispatch. They had just got 
through, luckily, when, at about half-past 
six, the captain rode hurriedly down the 
hill again. He carried a slip of white paper 
in his hand, which he seemed intent on 
deciphering. 

As I met him at the gate he said : — • 

"Sorry I shall miss those eggs — I've 
orders to move east"; and he began to 
round up his men. 

I foolishly asked him why. I felt as if I 
were losing a friend. 

"Orders," he answered. Then he put 
the slip of paper into his pocket, and lean- 
ing down he said : — 

"Before I go I am going to ask you to 
let my corporal pull down your flags. You 
may think it cowardly. I think it prudent. 
They can be seen a long way. It is silly 
to wave a red flag at a bull. Any needless 

[ 114 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

display of bravado on your part would be 
equally foolish." 

So the corporal climbed up and pulled 
down the big flags, and together we marched 
them off to the stable. When I returned to 
the gate, where the captain was waiting for 
the rest of the picket to arrive, I was sur- 
prised to find my French caller of the morn- 
ing standing there, with a pretty blonde 
girl, whom she introduced as her sister-in- 
law. She explained that they had started 
in the morning, but that their wagon had 
been overloaded and broken down and 
they had had to return, and that her 
mother was "glad of it." It was perfectly 
natural that she should ask me to ask the 
"English officer if it was safe to stay." I 
repeated the question. He looked down 
at them, asked if they were friends of mine. 
I explained that they were neighbors and 
acquaintances only. 

"Well," he said, "I can only repeat 
what I said to you this morning — I think 
you are safe here. But for God's sake, don't 
give it to them as coming from me. I can 
assure your personal safety, but I cannot 
take the whole village on my conscience." 

I told him that I would not quote 
him. 

[ IIS ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

All this time he had been searching In 
a letter-case, and finally selected an en- 
velope from which he removed the letter, 
passing me the empty cover. 

"I want you," he said, "to write me a 
letter — that address will always reach 
me. I shall be anxious to know how you 
came through, and every one of these boys 
will be interested. You have given them 
the only happy day they have had since 
they left home. As for me — if I live — 
I shall some time come back to see you. 
Good-bye and good luck." And he wheeled 
his horse and rode up the hill, his boys 
marching behind him; and at the turn of 
the road they all looked back and I waved 
my hand, and I don't mind telling you that 
I nodded to the French girls at the gate 
and got into the house as quickly as I 
could — and wiped my eyes. Then I 
cleared up the tea-mess. It was not until 
the house was in order again that I put 
on my glasses and read the envelope that 
the captain had given me : — 

Capt. T. E. Simpson, 

King^s Own Yorkshire L. I. 

ijth Infantry Brigade, 

i^th Division, 
British Expeditionary Force, 

[ ii6 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

And I put It carefully away in my address 
book until the time should come for me to 
write and tell "how I came through"; the 
phrase did disturb me a little. 

I did not eat any supper. Food seemed 
to be the last thing I wanted. I sat down in 
the study to read. It was about eight when 
I heard the gate open. Looking out I saw 
a man in khaki, his gun on his shoulder, 
marching up the path. I went to the door. 

"Good-evening, ma'am," he said. "All 
right.?" 

I assured him that I was. 

"I am the corporal of the guard," he 
added. "The commander's compliments, 
and I was to report to you that your road 
was picketed for the night and that all is 
well." 

I thanked him, and he marched away, 
and took up his post at the gate, and I 
knew that this was the commander's way 
of letting me know that Captain Simpson 
had kept his word. I had just time while 
the corporal stood at the door to see "Bed- 
ford" on his cap, so I knew that the new 
regiment was from Bedfordshire. 

I sat up awhile longer, trying to fix my 
mind on my book, trying not to look 
round constantly at my pretty green inte- 

[ 117 ] 



A Hilltop on the AIarne 

nor, at all my books, looking so ornamen- 
tal against the walls of my study, at all the 
portraits of the friends of my life of active 
service above the shelves, and the old six- 
teenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson 
sent me on my last birthday, looking so 
stoically down from his perch to remind 
me how little all these things counted. I 
could not help remembering at the end 
that my friends at Voulangis had gone — 
that they were at that very moment on 
their way to Marseilles, that almost every 
one else I knew on this side of the water 
was either at Havre waiting to sail, or in 
London, or shut up in Holland or Den- 
mark; that except for the friends I had at 
the front I was alone with my beloved 
France and her Allies. Through it all there 
ran a thought that made me laugh at last 

— how all through August I had felt so 
outside of things, only suddenly to find it 
right at my door. In the back of my mind 

— pushed back as hard as I could — stood 
the question, What was to become of all 
this .? 

Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and 

what is more I slept well. I was physically 

tired. The last thing I saw as I closed up 

the house was the gleam of the moonlight 

[ ii8 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

on the muskets of the picket pacing the 
road, and the first thing I heard, as I waked 
suddenly at about four, was the crunching 
of the gravel as they still marched there. 

I got up at once. It was the morning of 
Friday, the 4th of September. I dressed 
hurriedly, ran down to put the kettle on, 
and start the coffee, and by five o'clock I 
had a table spread in the road, outside the 
gate, with hot coffee and milk and bread 
and jam. I had my lesson, so I called the 
corporal and explained that his men were 
to come in relays, and when the coffee-pot 
was empty there was more in the house; 
and I left them to serve themselves, while 
I finished dressing. I knew that the officers 
were likely to come over, and one idea was 
fixed in my mind : I must not look demor- 
alised. So I put on a clean white frock, 
white shoes and stockings, a big black bow 
in my hair, and I felt equal to anything — 
in spite of the fact that before I dressed I 
heard far off a booming — could it be can- 
non ? — and more than once a nearer ex- 
plosion, — more bridges down, more Eng- 
lish across. 

It was not much after nine when two 
English officers strolled down the road — 
Captain Edwards and Major Ellison, of 

[ 119 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the Bedfordshire Light Infantry. They 
came into the garden, and the scene with 
Captain Simpson of the day before was 
practically repeated. They examined the 
plain, located the towns, looked long at it 
with their glasses; and that being over I 
put the usual question, " Can I do any- 
thing for you ^ " and got the usual answer, 
"Eggs." 

I asked how many officers there were in 
the mess, and he replied "Five"; so I 
promised to forage, and away they went. 

As soon as they were out of sight the 
picket set up a howl for baths. These Bed- 
fordshire boys were not hungry, but they 
had retreated from their last battle leaving 
their kits in the trenches, and were without 
soap or towels, or combs or razors. But 
that was easily remedied. They washed up 
in relays in the court at Amelie's — it was 
a little more retired. As Amelie had put all 
her towels, etc., down underground, I ran 
back and forward between my house and 
hers for all sorts of things, and, as they 
slopped until the road ran tiny rivulets, I 
had to change shoes and stockings twice. 
I was not conscious till afterward how 
funny it all was. I must have been a good 
deal like an excited duck, and Amelie like 

[ I20 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

a hen with a duckling. When she was not 
twitching my sash straight, she was run- 
ning about after me with dry shoes and 
stockings, and a chair, for fear "madame 
was getting too tired"; and when she was 
not doing that she was clapping my big 
garden hat on my head, for fear "madame 
would get a sunstroke." The joke was that 
I did not know it was hot. I did not even 
know it was funny until afterward, when 
the whole scene seemed to have been by a 
sort of dual process photographed uncon- 
sciously on my memory. 

When the boys were all washed and 
shaved and combed, — and they were so 
larky over it, — we were like old friends. 
I did not know one of them by name, but 
I did know who was married, and who had 
children; and how one man's first child had 
been born since he left England, and no 
news from home because they had seen 
their mail wagon burn on the battlefield; 
and how one of them was only twenty, and 
had been six years in the army, — lied 
when he enlisted; how none of them had 
ever seen war before; how they had always 
wanted to, and "Now," said the twenty- 
years older, "I've seen it — good Lord — 
and all I want is to get home," and he drew 

t 121 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

out of his breast pocket a photograph of a 
young girl in all her best clothes, sitting up 
very straight. 

When I said, "Best girl?" he said 
proudly, "Only one, and we were to have 
been married in January if this had n't 
happened. Perhaps we may yet, if we get 
home at Christmas, as they tell us we may." 

I wondered who he meant by "they." 
The officers did not give any such impres- 
sion. 

While I was gathering up towels and 
things before returning to the house, this 
youngster advanced toward me, and said 
with a half-shy smile, "I take it you're a 
lady." 

I said I was glad he had noticed it — I 
did make such an effort. 

"No, no," he said, "Pm not joking. I 
may not say it very well, but I am quite 
serious. We all want to say to you that if 
it is war that makes you and the women 
you live amongst so different from English 
women, then all we can say is that the 
sooner England is invaded and knows what 
it means to have a fighting army on her 
soil, and see her fields devastated and her 
homes destroyed, the better it will be for 
the race. You take my word for it, they 
[ 122 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

have no notion of what war is like; and 
there ain't no English woman of your 
class could have, or would have, done for us 
what you have done this morning. Why, 
in England the common soldier is the dirt 
under the feet of women like you." 

I had to laugh, as I told him to wait and 
see how they treated them when war was 
there; that they probably had not done the 
thing simply because they never had had 
the chance. 

"Well," he answered, "they'll have to 
change mightily. Why, our own women 
would have been uncomfortable and 
ashamed to see a lot of dirty men strip- 
ping and washing down like we have done. 
You have n't looked as if you minded it a 
bit, or thought of anything but getting us 
cleaned up as quick and comfortable as 
possible." 

I started to say that I felt terribly flat- 
tered that I had played the role so well, 
but I knew he would not understand. Be- 
sides, I was wondering if it were true. I 
never knew the English except as indi- 
viduals, never as a race. So I only laughed, 
picked up my towels, and went home to rest. 

Not long before noon a bicycle scout 
came over with a message from Captain 

[ 123 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Edwards, and I sent by him a basket of 
eggs, a cold chicken, and a bottle of wine 
as a contribution to the breakfast at the 
officers' mess; and by the time I had eaten 
my breakfast, the picket had been changed, 
and I saw no more of those boys. 

During the afternoon the booming off 
at the east became more distinct. It surely 
was cannon. I went out to the gate where 
the corporal of the guard was standing, and 
asked him, "Do I hear cannon?" 

"Sure," he replied. 

"Do you know where it is.?" I asked. 

He said he had n't an idea — about 
twenty-five or thirty miles away. And on 
he marched, up and down the road, per- 
fectly indifferent to it. 

When Amelie came to help get tea at the 
gate, she said that a man from Voisins, who 
had started with the crowd that left here 
Wednesday, had returned. He had brought 
back the news that the sight on the road 
was simply horrible. The refugies had got 
so blocked in their hurry that they could 
move in neither direction; cattle and 
horses were so tired that they fell by the 
way; it would take a general to disentangle 
them. My! was n't I glad that I had not 
been tempted to get into that mess! 
[ 124 ] 



A Hilltop on the IMarne 

Just after the boys had finished their 
tea, Captain Edwards came down the road, 
swinging my empty basket on his arm, to 
say "Thanks " for his breakfast. He looked 
at the table at the gate. 

"So the men have been having tea — 
lucky men — and bottled water! What 
extravagance ! " 

"Come in and have some, too," I said. 

"Love to," he answered, and in he came. 

While I was making the tea he walked 
about the house, looked at the pictures, 
examined the books. Just as the table was 
ready there was a tremendous explosion. 
He went to the door, looked off, and re- 
marked, as if it were the most natural thing 
in the world, "Another division across. 
That should be the last." 

"Are all the bridges down.^" I asked. 

"All, I think, except the big railroad 
bridge behind you — Chalifert. That will 
not go until the last minute." 

I wanted to ask, "When will it be the 
Mast minute' — and what does the Mast 
minute' mean?" — but where was the 
good? So we went into the dining-room. 
As he threw his hat on to a chair and sat 
down with a sigh, he said, "You see be- 
fore you a very humiliated man. About 

[ I2S ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

half an hour ago eight of the Uhlans we are 
looking for rode right into the street below 
you, in Voisins. We saw them, but they 
got away. It is absolutely our own stupid- 
ity." 

"Well," I explained to him, "I fancy I 
can tell you where they are hiding. I told 
Captain Simpson so last night." And I 
explained to him that horses had been 
heard in the woods at the foot of the hill 
since Tuesday; that there was a cart road, 
rough and winding, running in toward 
Conde for over two miles; that it was ab- 
solutely screened by trees, had plenty of 
water, and not a house in it, — a shelter 
for a regiment of cavalry. -And I had the 
impertinence to suggest that if the picket 
had been extended to the road below it 
would have been impossible for the Ger- 
mans to have got into Voisins. 

"Not enough of us," he replied. "We 
are guarding a wide territory, and cannot 
put our pickets out of sight of one another." 
Then he explained that, as far as he knew 
from his aeroplane men, the detachment 
had broken up since it was first discovered 
on this side of the Marne. It was reported 
that there were only about twenty-four in 
this vicinity; that they were believed to be 
[ 126 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

without ammunition; and then he dropped 
the subject, and I did not bother him with 
questions that were bristling in my mind. 

He told me how sad it was to see the ruin 
of the beautiful country through which 
they had passed, and what a mistake it had 
been from his point of view not to have 
foreseen the methods of Germans and 
drummed out all the towns through which 
the armies had passed. He told me one or 
two touching and interesting stories. One 
was of the day before a battle, I think it 
was Saint-Quentin. The officers had been 
invited to dine at a pretty chateau near 
which they had bivouacked. The French 
family could not do too much for them, 
and the daughters of the house waited on 
the table. Almost before the meal was 
finished the alerte sounded, and the battle 
was on them. When they retreated by the 
house where they had been so prettily en- 
tertained such a few hours before, there 
was not one stone standing on another, 
and what became of the family he had no 
idea. 

The other that I remember was of the 
way the Germans passed the river at Saint- 
Quentin and forced the battle at La Fere on 
them. The bridge was mined, and the cap- 

[ 127 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

tain was standing beside the engineer wait- 
ing to give the order to touch off the mine. 
It was a nasty night — a Sunday (only last 
Sunday, think of that!) — and the rain was 
coming down in torrents. Just before the 
Germans reached the bridge he ordered it 
blown up. The engineer touched the but- 
ton. The fuse did not act. He was in de- 
spair, but the captain said to him, "Brace 
up, my lad — give her another chance.'* 
The second effort failed like the first. Then, 
before any one could stop him, the en- 
gineer made a dash for the end of the 
bridge, drawing his revolver as he ran, and 
fired six shots into the mine, knowing that, 
if he succeeded, he would go up with the 
bridge. No good, and he was literally 
dragged off the spot weeping with rage 
at his failure — and the Germans came 
across. 

All the time we had been talking I had 
heard the cannonade in the distance — 
now at the north and now in the east. This 
seemed a proper moment, inspired by the 
fact that he was talking war, of his own 
initiative, to put a question or two, so I 
risked it. 

"That cannonading seems much nearer 
than it did this morning," I ventured. 

[ 128 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

"Possibly," he replied. 

"What does that mean?" I persisted. 

"Sorry I can't tell you. We men know 
absolutely nothing. Only three men in this 
war know anything of its plans, — Kitch- 
ener, Joffre, and French. The rest of us 
obey orders, and know only what we see. 
Not even a brigade commander is any 
wiser. Once in a while the colonel makes 
a remark, but he is never illuminating." 

"How much risk am I running by re- 
maining here.f*" 

He looked at me a moment before he 
asked, "You want to know the truth .^" 

"Yes," I replied. 

"Well, this is the situation as near as I 
can work it out. We infer from the work 
we were given to do — destroying bridges, 
railroads, telegraphic communications — 
that an effort is to be made here to stop 
the march on Paris; in fact, that the Ger- 
mans are not to be allowed to cross the 
Marne at Meaux, and march on the city 
by the main road from Rheims to the cap- 
ital. The communications are all cut. 
That does not mean that it will be impos- 
sible for them to pass; they've got clever 
engineers. It means that we have impeded 
them and may stop them. I don't know. 

[ 129 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Just now your risk Is nothing. It will be 
nothing unless we are ordered to hold this 
hill, which is the line of march from 
Meaux to Paris. We have had no such 
order yet. But if the Germans succeed in 
taking Meaux and attempt to put their 
bridges across the Marne, our artillery, 
behind you there on the top of the hill, 
must open fire on them over your head. 
In that case the Germans will surely reply 
by bombarding this^hill." And he drank 
his tea without looking to see how I took 
it. 

I remember that I was standing op- 
posite him, and I involuntarily leaned 
against the wall behind me, but suddenly 
thought, "Be careful. You'll break the 
glass in the picture of Whistler's Mother, 
and you'll be sorry." It brought me up 
standing, and he did n't notice. Is n't the 
mind a queer thing .f* 

He finished his tea, and rose to go. As 
he picked up his cap he showed me a hole 
right through his sleeve — in one side, out 
the other — and a similar one in his puttee, 
where the ball had been turned aside by 
the leather lacing of his boot. He laughed 
as he said, "Odd how near a chap comes 
to going out, and yet lives to drink tea with 

[ 130 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

you. Well, good-bye and good luck if I 
don't see you again." 

And off he marched, and I went into the 
library and sat down and sat very still. 

It was not more than half an hour after 
Captain Edwards left that the corporal 
came in to ask me if I had a window in the 
roof. I told him that there was, and he 
asked if he might go up. I led the way, 
picking up my glasses as I went. He ex- 
plained, as we climbed the two flights of 
stairs, that the aeroplane had reported a 
part of the Germans they were hunting 
"not a thousand feet from this house." I 
opened the skylight. He scanned in every 
direction. I knew he would not see any- 
thing, and he did not. But he seemed to 
like the view, could command the roads 
that his posse was guarding, so he sat on 
the window ledge and talked. The com- 
mon soldier is far fonder of talking than 
his officer and apparently he knows more. 
If he^ does n't, he thinks he does. So he 
explained to me the situation as the "men 
saw it." I remembered what Captain Ed- 
wards had told me, but I listened all the 
same. He told me that the Germans were 
advancing in two columns about ten miles 
apart, flanked in the west by a French di- 

[ 131 ] 



A Hilltop on the A/[arne 

vision pushing them east, and led by the 
English drawing them toward the Marne. 
"You know," he said, "that we are the 
sacrificed corps, and we have known it from 
the first — went into the campaign know- 
ing it. We have been fighting a force ten 
times superior in numbers, and retreat- 
ing, doing rear-guard action, whether we 
were really outfought or not — to draw 
the Germans where Joffre wants them. 
I reckon we 've got them there. It is great 
strategy — Kitchener's, you know." 

Whether any of the corporal's ideas had 
any relation to facts I shall never know 
until history tells me, but I can assure you 
that, as I followed the corporal downstairs, 
I looked about my house — and, well, I 
don't deny it, it seemed to me a doomed 
thing, and I was sorry for it. However, as 
I let him out into the road again, I pounded 
into myself lots of things like "It has n't 
happened yet"; "Sufficient unto the day"; 
and, "What isn't to be, won't be"; and 
found I was quite calm. Luckily I did not 
have much time to myself, for I had hardly 
sat down quietly when there was another 
tap at the door and I opened to find an 
officer of the bicycle corps standing there. 

"Captain Edwards's compliments," he 

[ 132 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

said, "and will you be so kind as to explain 
to me exactly where you think the Uhlans 
are hidden?" 

I told him that if he would come down 
the road a little way with me I would show 
him. 

"Wait a moment," he said, holding the 
door. "You are not afraid?" 

I told him that I was not. 

"My orders are not to expose you use- 
lessly. Wait there a minute." 

He stepped back into the garden, gave 
a quick look overhead, — I don't know 
what for, unless for a Taube. Then he 
said, "Now, you will please come out into 
the road and keep close to the bank at the 
left, in the shadow. I shall walk at the 
extreme right. As soon as I get where I 
can see the roads ahead, at the foot of the 
hill, I shall ask you to stop, and please 
stop at once. I don't want you to be seen 
from the road below, in case any one is 
there. Do you understand?" 

I said I did. So we went into the road 
and walked silently down the hill. Just 
before we got to the turn, he motioned me 
to stop and stood with his map in hand 
while I explained that he was to cross the 
road that led into Voisins, take the cart 

[ 133 I 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

track down the hill past the washhouse 
on his left, and turn into the wood road on 
that side. At each indication he said, "I 
have it." When I had explained, he simply 
said, *' Rough road.^" 

I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest 
weather. 

** Wooded all the way.^" he asked. 

I told him that it was, and, what was 
more, so winding that you could not see 
ten feet ahead anywhere between here and 
Conde. 

"Humph," he said. "Perfectly clear, 
thank you very much. Please wait right 
there a moment." 

He looked up the hill behind him, and 
made a gesture in the air with his hand 
above his head. I turned to look up the 
hill also. I saw the corporal at the gate 
repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, 
four abreast, guns on their backs, slid 
round the corner and came gliding down 
the hill. There was not a sound, not the 
rattle of a chain or a pedal. 

"Thank you very much," said the cap- 
tain. "Be so kind as to keep close to the 
bank." 

When I reached my gate I found some 
of the men of the guard dragging a big, 

[ 134 1 




< -2 

S X! 



O o 
Q I 

O s< 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

long log down the road, and I watched them 
while they attached it to a tree at my gate, 
and swung it across to the opposite side 
of the road, making in that way a barrier 
about five feet high. I asked what that 
was for? ''Captain's orders," was the 
laconic reply. But when it was done the 
corporal took the trouble to explain that 
it was a barricade to prevent the Germans 
from making a dash up the hill. 

"However," he added, "don't you get 
nervous. If we chase them out it will only 
be a little rifle practice, and I doubt if they 
even have any ammunition." 

As I turned to go into the house, he 
called after me, — 

"See here, I notice that you 've got 
doors on all sides of your house. Better 
lock all those but this front one." 

As all the windows were barred and so 
could be left open, I didn't mind; so I 
went in and locked up. The thing was get- 
ting to be funny to me, — always doing 
something, and nothing happening. I sup- 
pose courage is a cumulative thing, if only 
one has time to accumulate, and these boys 
in khaki treated even the cannonading as 
if it were all "in the day's work." 

It was just dusk when the bicycle corps 

[ 135 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

returned up the hill. They had to dis- 
mount and wheel their machines under the 
barricade, and they did it so prettily, dis- 
mounting and remounting with a precision 
that was neat. 

"Nothing," reported the captain. "We 
could not go in far, — road too rough and 
too dangerous. It is a cavalry job." 

All the same, I am sure the Uhlans are 
there. 



XIII 

September 5, 1914. 

I HAD gone to bed early on Friday night, 
and had passed an uneasy night. It was 
before four when I got up and opened my 
shutters. It was a lovely day. Perhaps I 
have told you that the weather all last 
week was simply perfect. 

I went downstairs to get coffee for the 
picket, but when I got out to the gate there 
was no picket there. There was the bar- 
ricade, but the road was empty. I ran up 
the road to Amelie's. She told me that 
they had marched away about an hour 
before. A bicyclist had evidently brought 
an order. As no one spoke English, no one 
understood what had really happened. 
Pere had been to Couilly — they had all 
left there. So far as any one could discover 
there was not an English soldier, or any 
kind of a soldier, left anywhere in the com- 
mune. 

This was Saturday morning, September 
5, and one of the loveliest days I ever saw. 
The air was clear. The sun was shining. 

[ 137 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

The birds were singing. But otherwise it 
was very still. I walked out on the lawn. 
Little lines of white smoke were rising from 
a few chimneys at Joncheroy and Voisins. 
The towns on the plain, from Monthyon 
and Penchard on the horizon to Mareuil in 
the valley, stood out clear and distinct. 
But after three days of activity, three days 
with the soldiers about, it seemed, for the 
first time since I came here, lonely; and for 
the first time I realized that I was actually 
cut off from the outside world. All the 
bridges in front of me were gone, and the 
big bridge behind me. No communica- 
tion possibly with the north, and none with 
the south except by road over the hill to 
Lagny. Esbly evacuated, Couilly evacu- 
ated, Quincy evacuated. All the shops 
closed. No government, no post-ofRce, and 
absolutely no knowledge of what had hap- 
pened since Wednesday. I had a horrible 
sense of isolation. 

Luckily for me, part of the morning was 
killed by what might be called an incident 
or a disaster or a farce — just as you look 
at it. First of all, right after breakfast I 
had the proof that I was right about the 
Germans. Evidently well informed of the 
movements of the English, they rode boldly 

[ 138 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

into the open. Luckily they seemed dis- 
inclined to do any mischief. Perhaps the 
place looked too humble to be bothered 
with. They simply asked — one of them 
spoke French, and perhaps they all did — 
where they were, and were told, "Huiry, 
commune of Quincy." They looked it up 
on their maps, nodded, and asked if the 
bridges on the Marne had been destroyed, 
to which I replied that I did not know, — 
I had not been down to the river. Half a 
truth and half a lie, but goodness knows 
that it was hard enough to have to be 
polite. They thanked me civilly enough 
and rode down the hill, as they could not 
pass the barricade unless they had wished 
to give an exhibition of "high school." 
Wherever they had been they had not suf- 
fered. Their horses were fine animals, and 
both horses and men were well groomed 
and in prime condition. 

The other event was distressing, but 
about that I held my tongue. 

Just after the Germans were here, I went 
down the road to call on my new French 
friends at the foot of the hill, to hear how 
they had passed the night, and incident- 
ally to discover if there were any soldiers 
about. Just in the front of their house I 

[ 139 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

found an English bicycle scout, leaning on 
his wheel and trying to make himself un- 
derstood in a one-sided monosyllabic dia- 
logue, with the two girls standing in their 
window. 

I asked him who he was. He showed his 
papers. They were all right — an Irish- 
man — Ulster — Royal Innisfall Fusiliers 
— thirteen years in the service. 

I asked him if there were any English 
soldiers left here. He said there was still a 
bicycle corps of scouts at the foot of the 
hill, at Couilly. I thought that funny, as 
Pere had said the town was absolutely de- 
serted. Still, I saw no reason to doubt his 
word, so when he asked me if I could give 
him his breakfast, I brought him back to 
the house, set the table in the arbor, and 
gave him his coffee and eggs. When he had 
finished, he showed no inclination to go — 
said he would rest a bit. As Amelie was in 
the house, I left him and went back to 
make the call my encounter with him had 
interrupted. When I returned an hour 
later, I found him fast asleep on the bench 
in the arbor, with the sun shining right on 
his head. His wheel, with his kit and gun 
on it was leaning up against the house. 

It was nearly noon by this time, and hot, 

[ 140 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

and I was afraid he would get a sunstroke; 
so I waked him and told him that if it was 
a rest he needed, — and he was free to 
take it, — he could go into the room at the 
head of the stairs, where he would find a 
couch and lie down comfortably. He had 
sleepily obeyed, and must have just about 
got to sleep again, when it occurred to me 
that it was hardly prudent to leave an Eng- 
lish bicycle with a khaki-covered kit and 
a gun on it right on the terrace in plain 
sight of the road up which the Germans had 
ridden so short a time before. So I went to 
the foot of the stairs, called him, and ex- 
plained that I did not care to touch the 
wheel on account of the gun, so he had 
better come dowi^ and put it av/ay, which 
he did. I don't know whether it was my 
saying "Germans" to him that explained 
it, but his sleepiness seemed suddenly to 
have disappeared, so he asked for the 
chance to wash and shave; and half an 
hour later he came down all slicked up and 
spruce, with a very visible intention of 
paying court to the lady of the house. 
Irish, you see, — white hairs no obstacle. 
I could not help laughing. *' Hoity- 
toity," I said to myself, "I am getting all 
kinds of impressions of the military." 

I 141 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

While I was, with amusement, putting 
up fences, the gardener next door came 
down the hill in great excitement to tell me 
that the Germans were on the road above, 
and were riding down across Pere's farm 
into a piece of land called 'Ha terre blanche,^^ 
where Pere had recently been digging out 
great rocks, making it an ideal place to 
hide. He knew that there was an English 
scout in my house and thought I ought to 
know. I suppose he expected the boy in 
khaki to grab his gun and capture them 
all. I thanked him and sent him away. I 
must say my Irishman did not seem a bit 
interested in the Germans. His belt and 
pistol lay on the salon table, where he put 
them when he came downstairs. He made 
himself comfortable in an easy chair, and 
continued to give me another dose of his 
blarney. I suppose I was getting needlessly 
nervous. It was really none of my business 
what he was doing here. Still he was a bit 
too sans gene. 

Finally he began to ask questions. "Was 
I afraid.?" I was not. "Did I live alone.?" 
I did. As soon as I had said it, I thought it 
was stupid of me, especially as he at once 
said, — " If you are, yer know, I '11 come 
back here to sleep to-night. I 'm perfectly 

[ 142 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

free to come and go as I like, — don't have 
to report until I'm ready." 

I thought it wise to remind him right 
here that if his corps was at the foot of the 
hill, it was wise for him to let his command- 
ing officer know that the Germans, for 
whom two regiments had been hunting for 
three days, had come out of hiding. I fancy 
if I had not taken that tack he'd have 
settled for the day. 

"Put that thing on," I said, pointing to 
his pistol; "get your wheel out of the barn, 
and I '11 take a look up the road and see that 
it's clear. I don't care to see you attacked 
under my eyes." 

I knew that there was not the slightest 
danger of that, but it sounded business- 
like. I am afraid he found it so, because he 
said at once, "Could you give me a drink 
before I go.^" 

"Water.?" I said. 

"No, not that." 

I was going to say "no" when it oc- 
curred to me that Amelie had told me that 
she had put a bottle of cider in the buffet, 
and — well, he was Irish, and I wanted to 
get rid of him. So I said he could have a 
glass of cider, and I got the bottle, and 
a small, deep champagne glass. He un- 

[ 143 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

corked the bottle, filled a brimming glass, 
recorked the bottle, drank it off, and 
thanked me more earnestly than cider 
would have seemed to warrant. While 
he got his wheel out I went through the 
form of making sure the road was free. 
There was no one in sight. So I sent him 
away with directions for reaching Couilly 
without going over the part of the hill 
where the Uhlans had hidden, and drew a 
sigh of relief when he was off. Hardly fif- 
teen minutes later some one came running 
up from Voisins to tell me that just round 
the corner he had slipped off his wheel, 
almost unconscious, — evidently drunk. 
I was amazed. He had been absolutely all 
right when he left me. As no one under- 
stood a word he tried to say, there was 
nothing to do but go and rescue him. But 
by the time I got to where he had fallen 
off his wheel, he was gone, — some one had 
taken him away, — and it was not until 
later that I knew the truth of the mat- 
ter, but that must keep until I get to the 
way of the discovery. 

All this excitement kept me from listen- 
ing too much to the cannon, which had 
been booming ever since nine o'clock. Ame- 
lie had been busy running between her 

[ 144 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

house and mine, but she has, among other 
big qualities, the blessed habit of taking 
no notice. I wish it were contagious. She 
went about her work as if nothing were 
hanging over us. I walked about the house 
doing little things aimlessly. I don't be- 
lieve Amelie shirked a thing. It seemed to 
me absurd to care whether the dusting were 
done or not, whether or not the writing- 
table was in order, or the pictures straight 
on the wall. 

As near as I can remember, it was a little 
after one o'clock when the cannonading 
suddenly became much heavier, and I 
stepped out into the orchard, from which 
there is a wide view of the plain. I gave 
one look; then I heard myself say, "Ame- 
lie," — as if she could help, — and I re- 
treated. Amelie rushed by me. I heard 
her say, "Mon Dieu." I waited, but she 
did not come back. After a bit I pulled 
myself together, went out again, and fol- 
lowed down to the hedge where she was 
standing, looking off to the plain. 

The battle had advanced right over the 
crest of the hill. The sun was shining bril- 
liantly on silent Mareuil and Chauconin, 
but Monthyon and Penchard were en- 
veloped in smoke. From the eastern and 

[ H5 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

western extremities of the plain we could 
see the artillery fire, but owing to the 
smoke hanging over the crest of the hill on 
the horizon, it was impossible to get an 
idea of the positions of the armies. In the 
west it seemed to be somewhere near Claye, 
and in the east it was in the direction of 
Barcy. I tried to remember what the Eng- 
lish soldiers had said, — that the Germans 
were, if possible, to be pushed east, in which 
case the artillery at the west must be either 
the French or English. The hard thing to 
bear was, that it was all conjecture. 

So often, when I first took this place on 
the hill, I had looked off at the plain and 
thought, "What a battlefield!" forgetting 
how often the Seine et Marne had been 
that from the days when the kings lived 
at Chelles down to the days when it saw 
the worst of the invasion of 1870. But 
when I thought that, I had visions very 
different from what I was seeing. I had 
imagined long lines of marching soldiers, 
detachments of flying cavalry, like the war 
pictures at Versailles and Fontainebleau. 
Now I was actually seeing a battle, and it 
was nothing like that. There was only 
noise, belching smoke, and long drifts of 
white clouds concealing the hilL 

[ 146 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

By the middle of the afternoon Mon- 
thyon came slowly out of the smoke. That 
seemed to mean that the heaviest firing was 
over the hill and not on it, — or did it mean 
that the battle was receding? If it did, then 
the Allies were retreating. There was no 
way to discover the truth. And all this 
time the cannon thundered in the south- 
east, in the direction of Coulommiers, on 
the route into Paris by Ivry. 

Naturally I could not but remember 
that we were only seeing the action on the 
extreme west of a battle-line which prob- 
ably extended hundreds of miles. I had 
been told that Joifre had made a frontier 
of the Marne. But alas, the Meuse had 
been made a frontier — but the Germans 
had crossed it, and advanced to here in 
little less than a fortnight. If that — why 
not here.'* It was not encouraging. 

A dozen times during the afternoon I 
went into the study and tried to read. 
Little groups of old men, women, and chil- 
dren were in the road, mounted on the 
barricade which the English had left. I 
could hear the murmur of their voices. In 
vain I tried to stay indoors. The thing was 
stronger than I, and in spite of myself, I 
would go out on the lawn and, field-glass 

[ 147 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

m hand, watch the smoke. To my Imagina- 
tion every shot meant awful slaughter, and 
between me and the terrible thing stretched 
a beautiful country, as calm in the sun- 
shine as if horrors were not. In the field 
below me the wheat was being cut. I re- 
membered vividly afterward that a white 
horse was drawing the reaper, and women 
and children were stacking and gleaning. 
Now and then the horse would stop, and 
a woman, with her red handkerchief on her 
head, would stand, shading her eyes a mo- 
ment, and look off. Then the white horse 
would turn and go plodding on. The grain 
had to be got in if the Germans were com- 
ing, and these fields were to be trampled 
as they were in 1870. Talk about the dual- 
ity of the mind — it is sextuple. I would 
not dare tell you all that went through 
mine that long afternoon. 

It was just about six o'clock when the 
first bomb that we could really see came 
over the hill. The sun was setting. For 
two hours we saw them rise, descend, ex- 
plode. Then a little smoke would rise from 
one hamlet, then from another; then a tiny 
flame — hardly more than a spark — ■ 
would be visible; and by dark the whole 
plain was on fire, lighting up Mareuil in 

[ 148 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the foreground, silent and untouched. 
There were long lines of grain-stacks and 
mills stretching along the plain. One- by- 
one they took fire, until, by ten o^clock, 
they stood like a procession of huge torches 
across my beloved panorama. 

It was midnight when I looked off for 
the last time. The wind had changed. The 
fires were still burning. The smoke was 
drifting toward us — and oh ! the odor of 
it! I hope you will never know what it is 
like. 

I was just going to close up when Ame- 
lie came to the door to see if I was all right. 
My mind was in a sort of riot. It was the 
suspense — the not knowing the result, 
or what the next day might bring. You 
know, I am sure, that physical fear is not 
one of my characteristics. Fear of Life, 
dread of Fate, I often have, but not the 
other. Yet somehow, when I saw Amelia 
standing there, I felt that I needed the 
sense of something living near me. So I 
said, "Amelie, do you want to do me a 
great service?" 

She said she'd like to try. 

"Well, then," I replied, "don't you want 
to sleep here to-night?" 

With her pretty smile, she pulled her 

[ 149 I 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

nightdress from under her arm: that was 
what she had come for. So I made her go 
to bed in the big bed in the guest-chamber, 
and leave the door wide open; and do you 
know, she was fast asleep in five minutes, 
and she snored, and I smiled to hear her, 
and thought it the most comforting sound 
I had ever heard. 

As for me, I did not sleep a moment. I 
could not forget the poor fellows lying 
dead out there in the starlight — and it 
was such a beautiful night. 



XIV 

September 6, 191 4. 

It was about my usual time, four o'clock, 
the next morning, — Sunday, September 6, 

— that I opened my blinds. Another lovely 
day. I was dressed and downstairs when, a 
little before five, the battle recommenced. 

I rushed out on the lawn and looked off. 
It had moved east — behind the hill be- 
tween me and Meaux. All I could see was 
the smoke which hung over it. Still it 
seemed nearer than it had the day before. 
I had just about room enough in my mind 
for one idea — " The Germans wish to 
cross the Marne at Meaux, on the direct 
route into Paris. They are getting there. 
In that case to-day will settle our fate. If 
they reach the Marne, that battery at 
Coutevroult will come into action," — 
that was what Captain Edwards had said, 

— "and I shall be in a direct line between 
the two armies." 

Amelie got breakfast as if there were no 
cannon, so I took my coffee, and said noth- 
ing. As soon as it was cleared away, I went 

[ iSi ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

up into the attic, and quietly packed a tiny 
square hat-trunk. I was thankful that this 
year's clothes take up so little room. I put 
in changes of underwear, stockings, slip- 
pers, an extra pair of low-heeled shoes, 
plenty of handkerchiefs, — just the essen- 
tials in the way of toilette stuff, — a few 
bandages and such emergency things, and 
had room for two dresses. When it was 
packed and locked, it was so light that I 
could easily carry it by its handle on top. 
I put my long black military cape, which I 
could carry over my shoulder, on it, with 
hat and veil and gloves. Then I went down 
stairs and shortened the skirt of my best 
walking-suit, and hung it and its jacket 
handy. I was ready to fly, — if I had to, 
■ — and in case of that emergency nothing 
to do for myself. 

I had got all this done systematically 
when my little French friend — I call her 
Mile. Henriette now — came to the door 
to say that she simply "could not stand 
another day of it." She had put, she said, 
all the ready money they had inside her 
corset, and a little box which contained 
all her dead father's decorations also, and 
she was ready to go. She took out the box 
and showed the pretty jeweled things, — 

[ 152 I 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

his cross of the Legion d^Honneur, his Papal 
decoration, and several foreign orders, — 
her father, it seems, was an officer in the 
army, a great friend of the Orleans family, 
and grandson of an officer of Louis XVFs 
Imperial Guard. She begged me to join 
them in an effort to escape to the south. I 
told her frankly that it seemed to me im- 
possible, and I felt it safer to wait until the 
English officers at Coutevroult notified us 
that it was necessary. It would be as easy 
then as now — and I was sure that it was 
safer to wait for their advice than to ad- 
venture it for ourselves. Besides, I had no 
intention of leaving my home and all the 
souvenirs of my life without making every 
efi'ort I could to save them up to the last 
moment. In addition to that, I could not 
see myself joining that throng of homeless 
refugies on the road, if I could help it. 

"But," she insisted, "you cannot save 
your house by staying. We are in the same 
position. Our house is full of all the sou- 
venirs of my father's family. It is hard to 
leave all that — but I am afraid — ter- 
ribly afraid for the children." 

I could not help asking her how she pro- 
posed to get away. So far as I knew there 
was not a carriage to be had. 

[ 153 I 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

She replied that we could start on foot 
in the direction of Melun, and perhaps find 
an automobile: we could share the ex- 
pense. Together we could find a way, and 
what was more, that I could share my op- 
timism and courage with them and that 
would help. 

That made me laugh, but I did n't think 
it necessary to explain to her that, once 
away from the shelter of my own walls, I 
should be just as liable to a panic as any 
one else, or that I knew we should not 
find a conveyance, or, worse still, that her 
money and her jewels would hardly be 
safe inside her corset if she were to meet 
with some of the Uhlans who were still 
about us. 

Amelie had not allowed me to carry a 
sou on me, nor even my handbag since we 
knew they were here. Such things as that 
have been hidden — all ready to be snatched 
up — ever since I came home from Paris 
last Wednesday — only four days ago, 
after all! 

Poor Mile. Henriette went away sadly 
when she was convinced that my mind was 
m.ade up. 

"Good-bye," she called over the hedge. 
"I seem to be always taking leave of you." 

[ 154 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I did not tell Amelle anything about this 
conversation. What was the good? I 
fancy it would have made no difference to 
her. I knew pretty well to what her mind 
was made up. Nothing in the world would 
have made Pere budge. He had tried it in 
1870, and had been led to the German post 
with a revolver at his head. He did not 
have any idea of repeating the experience. 
It was less than half an hour later that 
Mile. Henriette came up the hill again. 
She was between tears and laughter. 

"Mother will not go," she said. "She 
says if you can stay we must. She thinks 
staying is the least of two evils. We can 
hide the babies in the cave if necessary, and 
they may be as safe there as on the road." 

I could not help saying that I should be 
sorry if my decision influenced theirs. I 
could be responsible for myself. I could 
not bear to have to feel any responsibility 
for others in case I was wrong. But she 
assured me that her mother had been of my 
opinion from the first. "Only," she added, 
"if I could have coaxed you to go, she 
would have gone too." 

This decision did not add much to my 
peace of mind all that long Sunday. It 
seems impossible that it was only day be- 

[ 155 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

fore yesterday. I think the suspense was 
harder to bear than that of the day before, 
though all we could see of the battle were 
the dense clouds of smoke rising straight 
into the air behind the green hill under such 
a blue sky all aglow with sunshine, with 
the incessant booming of the cannon, which 
made the contrasts simply monstrous. 

I remember that it was about four in the 
afternoon when I was sitting in the arbor 
under the crimson rambler, which was a 
glory of bloom, that Pere came and stood 
near by on the lawn, looking off. With his 
hands in the pockets of his blue apron, he 
stood silent for a long time. Then he said, 
"Listen to that. They are determined to 
pass. This is different from 1870. In 1879 
the Germans marched through here with 
their guns on their shoulders. There was 
no one to oppose them. This time it is 
different. It was harvest-time that year, 
and they took everything, and destroyed 
what they did not take. They bedded their 
horses in the wheat." 

You see Pere's father was in the Franco- 
Prussian War, and his grandfather was 
with Napoleon at Moscow, where he had 
his feet frozen. Pere is over seventy, and 
his father died at ninety-six. Poor old 

[ 156 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Pere just hates the war. He Is as timid as 
a bird — can't kill a rabbit for his dinner. 
But with the queer spirit of the French 
farmer he has kept right on working as if 
nothing were going on. All day Saturday 
and all day Sunday he was busy digging 
stone to mend the road. 

The cannonading ceased a little after six 
— thirteen hours without intermission. 
I don't mind confessing to you that I hope 
the war is not going to give me many more 
days like that one. I'd rather the battle 
would come right along and be done with 
it. The suspense of waiting all day for that 
battery at Coutevroult to open fire was 
simply nasty. 

I went to bed as ignorant of how the 
battle had turned as I was the night be- 
fore. Oddly enough, to my surprise, I 
slept, and slept well. 



XV 

September 8, 19 14. M 

I DID not wake on the morning of Mon- ' 
day, September 7, — yesterday, — until 
I was waked by the cannon at five. I 
jumped out of bed and rushed to the win- 
dow. This time there could be no doubt 
of it: the battle was receding. The can- 
nonading was as violent, as incessant, as it 
had been the day before, but it was surely 
farther off — to the northeast of Meaux. 
It was another beautiful day. I never saw 
such weather. 

Amelie was on the lawn when I came 
down. "They are surely retreating," she 
called as soon as I appeared. 
I "They surely are," I replied. "It looks 
as if they were somewhere near Lizy-sur- 
rOurcq," and that was a guess of which I 
was proud a little later. I carry a map 
around these days as if I were an army 
officer. 

As Amelie had not been for the milk the 
night before, she started off quite gayly 
for it. She has to go to the other side of 

[ 158 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Voisins. It takes her about half anhour togo 
and return; so — just for the sake of doing 
something — I thought I would run down 
the hill and see how Mile. Henriette and 
the little family had got through the night. 

Amelie had taken the road across the 
fields. It is rough walking, but she does n't 
mind. I had stopped to tie a fresh ribbon 
about my cap, — a tri-color, — and was 
about five minutes behind her. I was about 
halfway down the hill when I saw Amelie 
coming back, running, stumbling, waving 
her milk-can and shouting, ''Madame — un 
anglais^ un anglais.''^ And sure enough, 
coming on behind her, his face wreathed 
in smiles, was an English bicycle scout, 
wheeling his machine. As soon as he saw 
me, he waved his cap, and Amelie breath- 
lessly explained that she had said, ''Dame 
americaine^"* and he had dismounted and 
followed her at once. 

We went together to meet him. As soon 
as he was near enough, he called out, 
"Good-morning. Everything is all right. 
Germans been as near you as they will ever 
get. Close shave." 

"Where are they.^" I asked as we met. 

"Retreating to the northeast — on the 
Ourcq." 

[ 159 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I could have kissed him. Amelie did. 
She simply threw both arms round his 
neck and smacked him on both cheeks, and 
he said, "Thank you, ma'am," quite pret- 
tily; and, like the nice clean English boy he 
was, he blushed. 

"You can be perfectly calm," he said. 
" Look behind you." 

I looked, and there along the top of my 
hill I saw a long line of bicyclists in khaki. 

"What are you doing here?" I asked, a 
little alarmed. For a moment I thought 
that if the English had returned, something 
was going to happen right here. 

"English scouts," he replied. "Colonel 
Snow's division, clearing the way for the 
advance. You've a whole corps of fresh 
French troops coming out from Paris on 
one side of you, and the English troops are 
on their way to Meaux." 

"But the bridges are down," I said. 

"The pontoons are across. Everything 
is ready for the advance. I think we've 
got 'em." And he laughed as if it were all 
a game of cricket. 

By this time we were in the road. I sent 
Amelie on for the milk. He wheeled his 
machine up the hill beside me. He asked 
me if there was anything they could do for 

[ i6o ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

me before they moved on. I told him there 
was nothing unless he could drive out the 
Uhlans who were hidden near us. 

He looked a little surprised, asked a few 
questions — how long they had been there .^ 
where they were? how many.? and if I had 
seen them.? and I explained. 

"Well," he said, "Til speak to the colo- 
nel about It. Don't you worry. If he has 
time he may get over to see you, but we are 
moving pretty fast." 

By this time we were at the gate. He 
stood leaning on his wheel a moment, look- 
ing over the hedge. 

"Live here with your daughter.?" he 
asked. 

I told him that I lived here alone with 
myself. 

"Was n't that your daughter I met.?'^ 

I did n't quite fall through the gate back- 
wards. I am accustomed to saying that I 
am old. I am not yet accustomed to have 
people notice it when I do not call their 
attention to it. Amelie is only ten years 
younger than I am, but she has got the fig- 
ure and bearing of a girl. The lad recovered 
himself at once, and said, "Why, of course 
not, — she does n't speak any English." 
I was glad that he did n't even apologize, 

f i6i 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

for I expect that I look fully a hundred and 
something. So with a reiterated "Don't 
worry — you are all safe here now," he 
mounted his wheel and rode up the hill. 

I watched him making good time across 
to the route to Meaux. Then I came into 
the house and lay down, I suddenly felt 
horribly weak. My house had taken on a 
queer look to me. I suppose I had been, in 
a sort of subconscious way, sure that it was 
doomed. As I lay on the couch in the salon 
and looked round the room, it suddenly 
appeared to me like a thing I had loved and 
lost and recovered — resurrected, in fact; 
a living thing to which a miracle had hap- 
pened. I even found myself asking, in my 
innermost soul, what I had done to de- 
serve this fortune. How had it happened, 
and why, that I had come to perch on this 
hillside, just to see a battle, and have it 
come almost to my door, to turn back and 
leave me and my belongings standing here 
untouched, as safe as if there were no war, 
• — and so few miles away destruction ex- 
tending to the frontier. 

The sensation was uncanny. Out there 

in the northeast still boomed the cannon. 

The smoke of the battle still rose straight 

in the still air. I had seen the war. I had 

[ 162 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

watched its destructive bombs. For three 
days its cannon had pounded on every 
nerve in my body; but none of the horror 
It had sowed from the eastern frontier of 
Belgium to within four miles of me, had 
reached me except in the form of a threat. 
Yet out there on the plain, almost within 
my sight, lay the men who had paid with 
their lives — each dear to some one — to 
hold back the battle from Paris — and 
incidentally from me. The relief had its 
bitterness, I can tell you. I had been pre- 
pared to play the whole game. I had not 
even had the chance to discover whether 
or not I could. You, who know me fairly 
well, will see the irony of it. I am eter- 
nally hanging round dans les coulisses, I am 
never in the play. I instinctively thought 
of Captain Simpson, who had left his bro- 
ther in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, and 
still had in him the kindly sympathy that 
had helped me so much. 

When Amelie returned, she said that 
every one was out at the Demi-Lune to 
watch the troups going to Meaux, and that 
the boys in the neighborhood were already 
swimming the Marne to climb the hill to 
the battlefield of Saturday. I had no curi- 
osity to see one scene or the other. I knew 

[ 163 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

what the French boys were like, with their 
stern faces, as well as I knew the English 
manner of going forward to the day's work, 
and the hilarious, macahre spirit of the 
French untried lads crossing the river to 
look on horrors as if it were a lark. 

I passed a strangely quiet morning. But 
the excitement was not all over. It was 
just after lunch that Amelie came running 
down the road to say that we were to have 
a cantonnement de regiment on our hill for 
the night and perhaps longer — French re- 
inforcements marching out from the south 
of Paris; that they were already coming 
over the crest of the hill to the south and 
could be seen from the road above; that 
the advance scouts were already here. Be- 
fore she had done explaining, an officer and 
a bicyclist were at the gate. I suppose they 
came here because it was the only house 
on the road that was open. I had to en^ 
counter the expressions of astonishment to 
which I am now quite accustomed — a 
foreigner in a little hole on the road to the 
frontier, in a partially evacuated country. 
I answered all the usual questions politely; 
but when he began to ask how many men 
I could lodge, and how much room there 
was for horses in the outbuildings, Amelie 

[ 164 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

sharply interfered, assuring him that she 
knew the resources of the hamlet better 
than I did, that she was used to "this sort 
of thing" and "madame was not"; and 
simply whisked him off. 

I can assure you that, as I watched the 
work of billeting a regiment in evacuated 
houses, I was mighty glad that I was here, 
standing, a willing hostess, at my door, but 
giving to my little house a personality no 
unoccupied house can ever have to a pass- 
ing army. They made quick work, and no 
ceremony, in opening locked doors and 
taking possession. It did not take the 
officer who had charge of the billeting half 
an hour, notebook in hand, to find quar- 
ters for his horses as well as his men. Be- 
fore the head of the regiment appeared 
over the hill names were chalked up on all 
the doors, and the number of horses on 
every door to barn and courtyard, and the 
fields selected and the number of men to 
be camped all over the hill. Finally the 
ofiicer returned to me. I knew by his man- 
ner that Amelie, who accompanied him, 
had been giving him a "talking to." 

"If you please, madame," he said, "I 
will see now what you can do for us"; and 
I invited him in. 

[ i6s 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I don't suppose I need to tell you that 
you would get very little idea of the inside 
of my house from the outside. I am quite 
used now to the little change of front in 
most people when they cross the threshold. 
The officer nearly went on tiptoes when he 
got inside. He mounted the polished stairs 
gingerly, gave one look at the bedroom 
part-way up, touched his cap, and said: 
"That will do for the chef -major. We will 
not trouble you with any one else. He has 
his own orderly, and will eat outside, and 
will be no bother. Thank you very much, 
madame"; and he sort of slid down the 
stairs, tiptoed out, and wrote in chalk on 
the gatepost, "Weitzel." 

By this time the advance guard was in 
the road and I could not resist going out 
to talk to them. They had marched out 
from the south of Paris since the day be- 
fore, — thirty-six miles, — without an idea 
that the battle was going on on the Marne 
until they crossed the hill at Montry and 
came in sight of its smoke. I tell you their 
faces were wreathed with smiles when they 
discovered that we knew the Germans were 
retreating. 

Such talks as I listened to that after- 
noon — only yesterday ■ — at my gate, 
[ i66 1 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

from such a fluent, amusing, clever 
French chap, — a bicyclist in the ambu- 
lance corps, — of the crossing the Meuse 
and the taking, losing, re-taking, and re- 
losing of Charleroi. Oddly enough these 
were the first real battle tales I had 
heard. 

It suddenly occurred to me, as we chatted 
and laughed, that all the time the English 
were here they had never once talked bat- 
tles. Not one of the Tommies had men- 
tioned the fighting. We had talked of 
"home," of the girls they had left behind 
them, of the French children whom the 
English loved, of the country, its customs, 
its people, their courage and kindness, but 
not one had told me a battle story of any 
kind, and I had not once thought of open- 
ing the subject. But this French lad of the 
ambulance corps, with his Latin eloquence 
and his national gift of humor and graphic 
description, with a smile in his eyes, and a 
laugh on his lips, told me stories that made 
me see how war affects men, and how often 
the horrible passes across the line into the 
grotesque. I shall never forget him as he 
stood at the gate, leaning on his wheel, 
describing how the Germans crossed the 
Meuse — a feat which cost them so dearly 

[ 167 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

that only their superior number made a 
victory out of a disaster. 

"I suppose," he said, "that in the his- 
tory of the war it will stand as a success — 
at any rate, they came across, which was 
what they wanted. We could only have 
stopped them, if at all, by an awful sacri- 
fice of life. Joffre is not doing that. If the 
Germans want to fling away their men by 
the tens of thousands — let them. In the 
end we gain by it. We can rebuild a coun- 
try; we cannot so easily re-create a race. 
We mowed them down like a field of wheat, 
by the tens of thousands, and tens of thou- 
sands sprang into the gaps. They ad- 
vanced shoulder to shoulder. Our guns 
could not miss them, but they were too 
many for us. If you had seen that crossing 
I imagine it would have looked to you like 
a disaster for Germany. It was so awful 
that it became comic. I remember one 
point where a bridge was mined. We let the 
first divisions of artillery and cavalry come 
right across on to our guns — they were 
literally destroyed. As the next division 
came on to the bridge — up it went — 
men, horses, guns dammed the flood, and 
the cavalry literally crossed on their own 
dead. We are bold enough, but we are not 
[ i68 ] 



A Hilltop on the IMarne 

so foolhardy as to throw away men like 
that. They will be more useful to Joffre 
later.'' 

It was the word "comic" that did for 
me. There was no sign in the fresh young 
face before me that the horror had left a 
mark. If the thought came to him that 
every one of those tens of thousands whose 
bodies dammed and reddened the flood was 
dear to some one weeping in Germany, his 
eyes gave no sign of it. Perhaps it was as 
well for the time being. Who knows ? 
i I felt the same revolt against the effect 
of war when he told me of the taking and 
losing of Charleroi and set it down as the 
most "grotesque" sight he had ever seen. 
"Grotesque" simply made me shudder, 
when he went on to say that even there, 
in the narrow streets, the Germans pushed 
on in "close order," and that the French 
mitrailleuses, which swept the street that 
he saw, made such havoc in their ranks 
that the air was so full of flying heads and 
arms and legs, of boots, and helmets, 
swords, and guns that it did not seem as if 
it could be real — "it looked like some 
burlesque"; and that even one of the gun- 
ners turned ill and said to his commander, 
who stood beside him: "For the love of 

[ 169 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

God, colonel, shall I go on ? " and the colo- 
nel, with folded arms, replied: "Fire 
away." 

Perhaps it is lucky, since war is, that 
men can be like that. When they cannot, 
what then ? But it was too terrible for me, 
and I changed the subject by asking him 
if it were true that the Germans deliber- 
ately fired on the Red Cross. He instantly 
became grave and prudent. .•' 

"Oh, well," he said, "I would not like 
to go on oath. We have had our field am- 
bulance destroyed. But you know the Ger- 
mans are often bad marksmen. They've 
got an awful lot of ammunition. They fire 
it all over the place. They are bound to hit 
something. If we screen our hospital be- 
hind a building and a shell comes over and 
blows us up, how can we swear the shell 
was aimed at us.^" ' 

Just here the regiment came over the 
hill, and I retreated inside the gate where 
I had pails of water ready for them to drink. 
They were a sorry-looking lot. It was a 
hot day. They were covered with dirt, and 
you know the ill-fitting uniform of the 
French common soldier would disfigure 
into trampdom the best-looking man in 
the world. 
[ 170 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

The barricade was still across the road. 
With their packs on their backs, their tin 
dippers in their hands for the drink they 
so needed, perspiring in their heavy coats, 
they crawled, line after line, under the bar- 
rier until an officer rode down and called 
sharply : — 

^'Halt!" 

The line came to a standstill. 

"What 's that thing?" asked the officer 
sternly. 

I replied that obviously it was a barri- 
cade. 

"Who put it there .^" he asked peremp- 
torily, as if I were to blame. 

I told him that the English did. 

"When.?" 

I felt as if I were being rather severely 
cross-examined, but I answered as civilly 
as I could, "The night before the battle." 

He looked at me for the first time — and 
softened his tone a bit — my white hair 
and beastly accent, I suppose — as he 
asked: — 

"What is it for?" 

I told him it was to prevent a detach- 
ment of Uhlans from coming up the hill. 
He hesitated a moment; then asked if it 
served any purpose now. I might have 

[ 171 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

told him that the Uhlans were still here, 
but I did n't, I simply said that I did not 
know that it did. "Cut it down!" he or- 
dered, and in a moment it was cut on one 
end and swung round against the bank and 
the regiment marched on. 

It was just after that that I discovered 
the explanation of what had happened to 
my Irish scout on Saturday. An exhausted 
soldier was in need of a stimulant, and one 
of his comrades, who was supporting him, 
asked me if I had anything. I had nothing 
but the bottle out of which the Irish scout 
had drunk. I rushed for it, poured some 
into the tin cup held out to me, and just 
as the poor fellow was about to drink, his 
comrade pulled the cup away, smelt it, and 
exclaimed, "Don't drink that — here, put 
some water in it. That's not cider. It's 
eau de vie des prunes. ^^ 

I can tell you I was startled. I had never 
tasted eau de vie des prune s, — a native 
brew, stronger than brandy, and far more 
dangerous, — and my Irishman had pulled 
off a full champagne glass at a gulp, and 
never winked. No wonder he fell off his 
wheel. The wonder is that he did not die 
on the spot. I was humiliated. Still, he was 
Irish and perhaps he did n't care. I hope 
[ 172 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

he did n't. But only think, he will never 
know that I did not do it on purpose. He 
was probably gloriously drunk. Anyway, 
it prevented his coming back to make that 
visit he threatened me with. 

The detachment of the regiment which 
staggered past my gate camped in the 
fields below me and in the courtyards at 
Voisins, and the rest of them made them- 
selves comfortable in the fields at the other 
side of the hill and the outbuildings on 
Amelie's place, and the officers and the 
ambulance corps began to seek their 
quarters. 

I was sitting in the library when my 
guest, Chef-Major Weitzel, rode up to the 
gate. I had a good chance to look him over, 
as he marched up the path. He was a dap- 
per, upright, little chap. He was covered 
with dust from his head to his heels. I 
could have written his name on him any- 
where. Then I went to the door to meet 
him. I suppose he had been told that he was 
to be lodged in the house of an American. 
He stopped abruptly, halfway up the path, 
as I appeared, clicked his heels together, 
and made me his best bow, as he said: — 

"I am told, madame, that you are so 
gracious as to offer me a bed." 

[ 173 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I might have replied literally, "Offer? 
I had no choice," but I did not. I said 
politely that if Monsieur le Chef-Major 
would take the trouble to enter, I should 
do myself the distinguished honor of con- 
ducting him to his chamber, having no 
servant for the moment to perform for him 
that service, and he bowed at me again, 
and marched in — no other word for it — 
and came up the stairs behind me. 

As I opened the door of my guest-room, 
and stood aside to let him pass, I found 
that he had paused halfway up and was 
giving my raftered green salon and the 
library beyond a curious glance. Being 
caught, he looked up at once and said : " So 
you are not afraid?" I supposed he was in- 
spired by the fact that there were no signs 
of any preparations to evacuate. 

I replied that I could not exactly say 
that, but that I had not been sufficiently 
afraid to run away and leave my house to 
be looted unless I had to. 

"Well," he said, with a pleasant laugh, 
"that is about as good an account of him- 
self as many a brave soldier can give the 
night before his first battle" ; and he passed 
me with a bow and I closed the door. 

Half an hour later he came downstairs, 

[ 174 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

all shaved and slicked up — in a white 
sweater, white tennis shoes, with a silk 
handkerchief about his neck, and a fatigue 
cap set rakishly on the side of his head, as 
if there were no such thing as hot weather 
or war, while his orderly went up and 
brought his equipment down to the ter- 
race, and began such a beating, brushing, 
and cleaning of boots as you never saw. 

At the library door he stopped, looked 
in, and said, "This is nice"; and before I 
could get together decent French enough 
to say that I was honored — or my house 
was — at his approval, he asked if he 
might be so indiscreet as to take the liberty 
of inviting some of his fellow officers to 
come into the garden and see the view. 
Naturally I replied that Monsieur le Chef- 
Major was at home and his comrades would 
be welcome to treat the garden as if it were 
theirs, and he made me another of his bows 
and marched away, to return in five min- 
utes, accompanied by half a dozen officers 
and a priest. As they passed the window, 
where I still sat, they all bowed at me 
solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped 
to ask if madame would be so good as to 
join them, and explain the country, which 
was new to them all. 

[ 175 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Naturally madame did not wish to. I 
had not been out there since Saturday 
night — was it less than forty-eight hours 
before? But equally naturally I was 
ashamed to refuse. It would, I know, seem 
super-sentimental to them. Sol reluctantly 
followed them out. They stood in a group 
about me — these men who had been in 
battles, come out safely, and were again 
advancing to the firing line as smilingly 
as one would go into a ballroom — while 
I pointed out the towns and answered 
their questions, and no one was calmer 
or more keenly interested than the Breton 
priest, in his long soutane with the red 
cross on his arm. All the time the cannon 
was booming in the northeast, but they 
paid no more attention to it than if it were 
a threshing-machine. 

There was a young lieutenant in the 
group who finally noticed a sort of reluc- 
tance on my part — which I evidently had 
not been able to conceal — to looking off 
at the plain, which I own I had been sur- 
prised to find as lovely as ever. He taxed 
me with it, and I confessed, upon which he 
said: — 

"That will pass. The day will come — 
Nature is so made, luckily — when you 

[ 176 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

will look off there with pride, not pain, and 
be glad that you saw what may prove the 
turning of the tide in the noblest war ever 
fought for civilization." 

I wonder. 

The chef-major turned to me — caught 
me looking in the other direction — to the 
west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill. 

"May I be very indiscreet.^" he asked. 

I told him that he knew best. 

"Well," he said, "I want to know how 
it happens that you — a foreigner, and a 
woman — happen to be living in what looks 
like exile — all alone on the top of a hill — 
in war-time .f^" 

I looked at him a moment — and — 
well, conditions like these make people 
friendly with one another at once. I was, 
you know, never very reticent, and in days 
like these even the ordinary reticences of 
ordinary times are swept away. So I an- 
swered frankly, as if these men were old 
friends, and not the acquaintances of an 
hour, that, as I was, as they could see, no 
longer young, very tired, and yet not 
weary with life, but more interested than 
my strength allowed. I had sought a 
pleasant retreat for my old age, — not too 
far from the City of my Love, — and that 

[ 177 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

I had chosen this hilltop for the sake of the 
panorama spread out before me; that I had 
loved it every day more than the day be- 
fore; and that exactly three months after 
I had sat down on this hilltop this awful 
war had marched to within sight of my gate, 
and banged its cannon and flung its deadly 
bombs right under my eyes. 

Do you know, every mother's son of 
them threw back his head — and laughed 
aloud. I was startled. I knew that I had 
shown unnecessary feeling — but I knew 
it too late. I made a dash for the house, but 
the lieutenant blocked the way. I could 
not make a scene. I never felt so like it in 
my life. 

"Come back, come back," he said. "We 
all apologize. It was a shame to laugh. 
But you are so vicious and so personal 
about it. After all, you know, the gods 
were kind to you — it did turn back — 
those waves of battle. You had better 
luck than Canute." 

"Besides," said the chef-major, "you 
can always say that you had front row 
stage box." 

There was nothing to do to save my face 
but to laugh with them. And they were 
still laughing when they tramped across 

[ 178 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

the road to dinner. I returned to the house 
rather mortified at having been led into 
such an unnecessary display of feeling, but 
I suppose I had been in need of some sort 
of an outlet. 

After dinner they came back to the 
lawn to lie about smoking their cigarettes. 
I was sitting in the arbor. The battle had 
become a duel of heavy artillery, which 
they all found "magnificent," these men 
who had been in such things. 

Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his 
feet. 

"Listen — listen — an aeroplane." 

We all looked up. There it was, quite 
low, right over our heads. 

"A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before 
he had got the words out of his mouth, 
Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry 
from the field behind us — the soldiers had 
seen it. The machine began to rise. I 
stood like a rock, — my feet glued to the 
ground, — while the regiment fired over 
my head. But it was sheer will power that 
kept me steady among these men who 
were treating it as if it were a Fourteenth 
of July show. I heard a ping. 

"Touched," said the officer as the 
Taube continued to rise. Another ping, 

I 179 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

Still it rose, and we watched it sail off to- 
ward the hills at the southeast. 

"Hit, but not hurt," sighed the officer, 
dropping down on the grass again, with a 
sigh. " It is hard to bring them down at that 
height with rifles, but it can be done." 

"Perhaps the English battery will get 
it," said I; "it is going right toward it." 

"If there is an English battery up 
there," replied he, "that is probably what 
he is looking for. It is hardly likely to un- 
mask for a Taube. I am sorry we missed 
it. You have seen something of the war. 
It is a pity you should not have seen it 
come down. It is a beautiful sight." 

I thought to myself that I preferred it 
should not come down in my garden. But 
I had no relish for being laughed at again, 
so I did not say it. 

Soon after they all went to bed, — very 
early, — and silence fell on the hilltop. I 
took a look round before I went to bed. I 
had not seen Amelie since the regiment 
arrived. But she, who had done every- 
thing to spare me inconvenience, had four- 
teen officers quartered in her place, and 
goodness knows how many horses, so she 
had little time to do for me. 

The hillside was a picture I shall never 
[ i8o ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

forget. Everywhere men were sleeping in 
the open — their guns beside them. Fires, 
over which they had cooked, were smoul- 
dering; pickets everywhere. The moon shed 
a pale light and made long shadows. It 
was really very beautiful if one could have 
forgotten that to-morrow many of these 
men would be sleeping for good — "Life's 
fitful dream" over. 



XVI 

September 8, 191 4. 

This morning everything and every- 
body was astir early. It was another glori- 
ously beautiful day. The birds were singing 
as if to split their throats. There was a 
smell of coffee all over the place. Men were 
hurrying up and down the hill, to and fro 
from the wash-house, bathing, washing out 
their shirts and stockings and hanging them 
on the bushes, rubbing down horses and 
douching them, cleaning saddles and accou- 
terments. There is a lot of work to be done 
by an army besides fighting. It was all like 
a play, and every one was so cheerful. 

The chef-major did not come down until 
his orderly called him, and when he did he 
looked as rosy and cheerful as a child, and 
announced that he had slept like one. Soon 
after he crossed the road for his coffee I 
heard the officers laughing and chatting as 
if it were a week-end house party. 

When Amelie came to get my breakfast 
she looked a wreck — I saw one of her 
famous bilious attacks coming. 
[ 182 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

It was a little after eleven, while the 
chef-major was upstairs writing, that his 
orderly came with a paper and carried it 
up to him. He came down at once, made 
me one of his pretty bows at the door of 
the library, and holding out a scrap of 
paper said: — 

"Well, madame, we are going to leave 
you. We advance at two." 

I asked him where he was going. 

He glanced at the paper in his hand, and 
replied: — 

"Our orders are to advance to Saint- 
Fiacre, — a little east of Meaux, — but 
before I go I am happy to relieve your 
mind on two points. The French cavalry 
has driven the Uhlans out — some of them 
were captured as far east as Bouleurs. And 
the English artillery has come down from 
the hill behind you and is crossing the 
Marne. We follow them. So you see you 
can sit here in your pretty library and read 
all these nice books in security, until the 
day comes — perhaps sooner than you 
dare hope — when you can look back to all 
these days, and perhaps be a little proud 
to have had a small part in it." And off he 
went upstairs. 

I sat perfectly still for a long time. Was 

[ 183 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

It possible that it was only a week ago that 
I had heard the drum beat for the dis- 
arming of the Seine et Marne? Was there 
really going to come a day when all the 
beauty around me would not be a mockery? 
All at once it occurred to me that I had 
promised Captain Simpson to write and 
tell him how I had "come through." Per- 
haps this was the time. I went to the foot 
of the stairs and called up to the chef- 
major. He came to the door and I ex- 
plained, asking him if, we being without a 
post-office, he could get a letter through, 
and what kind of a letter I could write, as 
I knew the censorship was severe. 

"My dear lady," he replied, "go and 
write your letter, — write anything you like, 
— and when I come down I will take charge 
of it and guarantee that it shall go through, 
uncensored, no matter what it contains." 

So I wrote to tell Captain Simpson that 
all was well at Huiry, — that we had es- 
caped, and were still grateful for all the 
trouble he had taken. When the officer 
came down I gave it to him, unsealed. 

" Seal it, seal it," he said, and when I had 
done so, he wrote, "Read and approved" 
on the envelope, and gave it to his orderly, 
and was ready to say "Good-bye." 

[ 184 ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

"Don't look so serious about it," he 
laughed, as we shook hands. "Some of us 
will get killed, but what of that? I wanted 
this war. I prayed for it. I should have 
been sad enough if I had died before it 
came. I have left a wife and children whom 
I adore, but I am ready to lay down my life 
cheerfully for the victory of which I am so 
sure. Cheer up. I think my hour has not 
yet come. I had three horses killed under 
me in Belgium. At Charleroi a bomb ex- 
ploded in a staircase as I was coming down. 
I jumped — not a scratch to show. Things 
like that make a man feel immune — but 
who knows?" 

I did my best to smile, as I said, " I don't 
wish you courage — you have that, but — 
good luck." 

"Thank you," he replied, "you've had 
that"; and away he marched, and that was 
the last I saw of him. 

I had a strange sensation about these 
men who had in so few days passed so 
rapidly in and out of my life, and in a mo- 
ment seemed like old friends. 

There was a bustle of preparation all 
about us. Such a harnessing of horses, such 
a rolling-up of half-dried shirts, but it was 
ail orderly and systematic. Over it all hung 

[ I8s ] 



A Hilltop on the Marne 

a smell of soup-kettles — the preparations 
for the midday meal, and a buzz of many 
voices as the men sat about eating out of 
their tin dishes. I did wish I could see only 
the picturesque side of it. 

It was two o'clock sharp when the regi- 
ment began to move. Nobands played. No 
drum beat. They just marched, marched, 
marched along the road to Meaux, and 
silence fell again on the hillside. 

Off to the northeast the cannon still 
boomed, — it is still booming now as I 
write, and it is after nine o'clock. There 
has been no sign of Amelie all day as I have 
sat here writing all this to you. I have tried 
to make it as clear a statement of facts as 
I could. I am afraid that I have been more 
disturbed in putting it down than I was in 
living it. Except on Saturday and Sun- 
day I was always busy, a little useful, and 
that helped. I don't know when I shall be 
able to get this off to you. But at least it 
is ready, and I shall take the first oppor- 
tunity I get to cable to you, as I am afraid 
before this you have worried, unless your 
geography is faulty, and the American 
papers are as reticent as ours. 

THE END 



APPENDIX 

In connection with the foregoing narrative 
this order issued by General Joffre on Septem- 
ber 4, 1914, which has but just become available 
for publication, has special interest and signi- 
ficance: — 

1. It is fitting to take advantage of the rash situa- 
tion of the First German Army to concentrate upon 
it the efforts of the Allied Armies on the extreme left. 
All dispositions will be made in the course of Septem- 
ber 5 to start for the attack on September 6. 

2. The disposition to be carried out by the eve- 
ning of September 5 will be: — 

(a) All the available forces of the Sixth Army to be 
to the northeast of Meaux, ready to cross the Ourcq 
between Lizy-sur-Ourcq and May-en-Multien, in 
the general direction of Chateau-Thierry. The avail- 
able elements of the First Cavalry Corps which are 
at hand will be placed for this operation under the 
orders of General Maunoury (commanding the Sixth 
Army) . 

(b) The British Army will be posted on the front 
of Changis-Coulommiers, facing eastward, ready to 
attack in the general direction of Montmirail. 

(c) The Fifth Army, closing a little to its left, will 
post itself on the general front of Courtacon-Ester- 
nay-Sezanne, ready to attack in the general direc- 
tion from south to north, the Second Cavalry Corps 
securing the connection between the British Army 
and the Fifth Army. 

[ 187 ] 



Appendix 

(d) The Ninth Army will cover the right of the 
Fifth Army, holding the southern exits from the 
march of Saint-Gond and carrying part of its forces 
on to the plateau north of Sezanne. 

3. The offensive will be taken by these different 
armies on September 6, beginning in the morning. 



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